September 24, 2007

  

US cattle and dairy group oppose new USDA Canadian beef regulations

 

 

US cattle ranchers and milk producers are exploring the possibilities to challenge a final rule released by the US Department of Agriculture on September 14 allowing the importation of Canadian cattle over thirty months, provided they are born after March 1, 1999, and Canadian beef from all cattle.

 

The date March 1, 1999 is a year and half after Canada put in place its ruminant-to-ruminant feed ban to prevent the spread of bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE). Canadian exporters need to prove the birth dates of their cattle by dentistry and written birth records in order to export them beginning November 19 when the rule is to take effect.

 

The imports of Canadian meat from cattle older than thirty months comes from the USDA decision to lift a temporary suspension of a January 2005 rule on opening the border to imports from Canada. This beef can be shipped after the removal of specified risk material, such as brains and spinal cords.

 

The National Milk Producers Federation is examining "its additional recourse" against the USDA rule. NMPF said last week that options for opposing the ruling could include legal action and trying to get Congress to pass a resolution of disapproval.

 

According to spokesman Chris Galen, the rule will lead to lower cattle prices that will then lower the net worth of farmers' herds and the increased milk production will depress milk prices for years to come. Canadian farmers have excess heifers to export and these young heifers which will produce especially large amounts of milk due milk production quotas in Canada, he said.

 

Another dairy industry source also said dairy heifers could pose a BSE threat to US herds. He said that a successful fight against the rule will depend more on how much opposition cattle groups can generate than on dairy producers.

 

Ranchers-Cattlemen Action Legal Fund (R-CALF) CEO Bill Bullard denounced the new rule on September 14 as endangering the health of US cattle herds as this "exposes our industry to an unnecessary and very avoidable risk."

 

He vowed that his group would fight the rule, first through seeking a congressional resolution of disapproval and then possibly through a legal challenge. He said R-CALF has been working closely with Senators Byron Dorgan (D-ND), Tim Johnson (D-SD) and Michael Enzi (R-WY), and Representative Barbara Cubin (R-WY) to have a resolution of disapproval introduced on the rule, Bullard said on September 18.

 

In February 2005, the Senate successfully passed a resolution of disapproval sponsored by Senator Kent Conrad (D-ND) against the January 2005 USDA rule on Canadian beef, but the House did not also do so. According to the Congressional Review Act, Congress can overturn a federal rule within 60 days of receiving notice of the rule by passing a joint resolution in both Houses by simple majority.

 

A spokesperson for Conrad said he could not confirm that Conrad would seek to introduce a new resolution of disapproval. Conrad did issue a press release on Sept. 14 blasting the USDA rule.

 

In a statement, the senator is urging the USDA to present more evidence that Canada is taking a serious approach towards feed ban and mad cow disease. Until the document is present, "it is simply foolish to allow these older cattle that are at the greatest risk into the United States. It threatens our markets and our own trade with other nations," he said.

 

Neither Enzi nor Dorgan have wholeheartedly endorsed the disapproval resolution as a response to the rule.

 

Dorgan opposes the rule as bad policy and evidence that the Bush Administration has once again sided with the big packing houses, according to his spokesman. He said Dorgan is evaluating his options for a response, including backing a resolution of disapproval.

 

Enzi sees the USDA rule as potentially endangering the safety of US beef supply, according to his spokesman. Enzi has repeatedly demanded that if USDA increases the age of cattle imported from a country with BSE outbreaks, it also must ensure consumers can clearly identify the origin of the beef they are buying, the spokesperson said.

 

So far, there is no US full country-of-origin labelling scheme that would allow them to do this, according to the spokesman. The House farm bill contains a rule-of-origin compromise, but the Senate Agriculture Committee has not yet acted on the 2007 farm bill.

 

Therefore, Enzi will look for ways either in the farm bill or possibly in stand alone legislation to ensure the safety of the US beef supply, according to the spokesperson.

 

Bullard said on September 18 that R-CALF has not yet decided whether to move forward with its legal attempt to overturn the original January 2005 USDA rule allowing Canadian cattle under 30 months of age and beef from cattle under 30 months. After initially winning an injunction in the Federal District Court in Montana in March 2005 against the USDA beef rule, R-CALF then faced a number of successful appeals by USDA in the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals including most recently a judgment in August 2007.

 

R-CALF can now appeal that judgment to the US Supreme Court or seek an en banc hearing in the Ninth Circuit. That special expanded hearing is presided over by 15 Ninth Circuit judges instead of the three that presided over the R-CALF case in August.

 

In that August ruling, the Ninth Circuit had dismissed R-CALF's evidence of BSE cases in Canada after the 2005 rule because that information was outside the information USDA had at the time it made its first Canadian beef rule

A US Cattlemen's Association official said that it would likely not seek a legal injunction because the wording of the rule is more difficult to challenge than earlier rules. He noted the rule acknowledges that the new market opening poses a "negligible" risk of BSE for US cattle. Disproving a negligible risk, which is a term not defined, is harder than challenging a "no risk" claim, he said. "They are getting very wise in how to write these now," he said.

 

He said realists long recognized that the imports would resume given the small number of Canadian BSE cases and the fact that no humans had died of the disease.

 

The group on September 13 urged Agriculture Secretary Mike Johanns to adopt January 1, 2003 as the cutoff birth date for cattle over 30 months of age in the rule. "The most recent cow infected with BSE in Canada was born in April 2002," an association source said. "If you want to base a ruling on science you can see that the problems with Canadian feed were going on four years after this [March 1999] date."

Supporting the new rule is the National Cattlemen's Beef Association (NCBA), which see export benefits from the implementation of the rule, according to Karen Batra a spokesperson for the NCBA.

 

While acknowledging there is going to be some concern in the [US] countryside, when you look at the economics the negative effects are quite minimal, she said. According to Batra, the ruling sets a "very positive" precedent that US trading partners should follow by allowing imports for beef from US cattle older than 30 months.

 

In the near term, NCBA is working to get US feeder cattle into Mexico and in the long term "more scientific" beef import restrictions from Asian trading partners such as Korea and Japan, she said. NCBA also expects this rule to enable the United States to regain its feeder cattle and breeding stock trade with Mexico and Canada. These were significant export markets worth US$125 to US$260 million in recent years prior to the discovery of BSE, NCBA said in a September 14 statement.

 

The American Meat Institute, which represents 70 percent of the meat processing industry, also issued a statement on Sept 14 supporting the rule. According to a USDA economic analysis issued in conjunction with the rule, a business using processing beef to produce ground beef will benefit from a projected fall of US$4.61 per 100 pounds hundredweight (cwt) of beef for processing. This is a 4.5 percent drop.

 

Given the difficulties that Canadian exporters will face in verifying the age of cattle through dentistry and written records, USDA estimates that Canada will export about 75,000 head of cattle in 2008. This is down from an initial estimate that the rule would lead to the import of about 650,000 heads, USDA said.

 

In addition to beef cattle, the rule will also apply to Canadian cattle blood and casings as well as dairy heifers but not sheep and goats, USDA officials said in a Sept. 14 press conference. The rule will go into effect on Nov. 19, after a 60-day review period for Congress.

 

USDA officials emphasized that the rule reflects the standards of the World Organization for Animal Health (OIE) for countries considered to pose a minimal risk for BSE. Both the US and Canada, which worked to develop these OIE rules, have been classified as minimal risk countries.

 

"The risk assessment acknowledged that BSE is present in Canada and that there likely would be additional cases identified in the future, and we still concluded that these imports would present a negligible risk of establishment of BSE in the United States," USDA Chief Veterinary Officer John Clifford said at the press conference.

 

Clifford emphasized that USDA had its risk assessment on which the rule is based reviewed by a group of recognized experts and that they all agreed with USDA that there was a negligible risk of BSE establishment in the United States as a result of these imports.

 

Currently, Canada can export cattle under 30 months old to the United States because they pose the least BSE risk. Since the US first began banning Canadian beef in May 2003, Canada has had 10 cases of the disease. This includes cows that were born after the feed ban went into effect.

 

The US has had three, one an animal born in Canada and sent to the US.