June 16, 2004

U.S. Producers Buying Cheap Canadian Cattle
 

While a U.S. lobby group fights to keep the border closed to Canadian cattle, some of its members are taking advantage of low prices and buying up Alberta livestock, say some Alberta beef producers.

The Ranchers-Cattlemen Action Legal Fund, United Stockgrowers of America (R-CALF USA) has been active in keeping the border closed after a single case of bovine spongiform encephalopathy was found in Alberta more than a year ago.

In April, the group persuaded a judge in Montana to block Canadian beef exports after the U.S. Department of Agriculture expanded a list of acceptable beef shipments.

R-CALF USA also opposes reopening the border to live cattle, arguing Canadian beef is unsafe.

Those arguments, however, are not stopping members of the organization from quietly buying livestock in Canada at prices driven down by the mad cow crisis, in anticipation of the border reopening, feedlot owner Rick Pascal says.

Pascal, who runs a feedlot with 40,000 head of cattle, said members of R-CALF USA currently own about 84,000 animals in Alberta.

"Quite frankly, the people in Canada, the feedlot operators in Canada, where a lot of these cattle are housed, are kind of sick and tired of these guys and their antics, so they're very forthcoming with this information," Pascal said.

The United States and 33 other countries closed their borders to Canadian beef in May 2003. The United States began accepting some cuts of beef last August, but would not allow shipments of live cattle.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture is in the process of determining whether the border should be reopened to live cattle.