National Milk asks USDA to hold-off on Canadian cattle
Published:May 7, 2007
Source :Brownfield
With the latest BSE-positive in Canada, the National Milk Producers Federation is asking USDA to reconsider plans to open the border to Canadian cattle. In a letter to U.S. Agriculture Secretary, Mike Johanns, NMPF President Jerry Kozak questions the effectiveness of the Canadian ruminant-to-ruminant feed ban. He states allowing Canadian cattle into the United States, “Has the high probability” of introducing a BSE-infected animal. Kozak argues, “All five of the recent BSE cases could have been exported to the U.S. under the rule that USDA is about to adopt”
NMPF Senior Vice President of Communications, Chris Galen, says had one of those cows been exported to the U.S. and then discovered, “The headlines here would not have been another Canadian animal with mad cow; it would have been that it’s another American animal with mad cow.” Galen says this is something that has to be looked at further.
USDA contends that we cannot expect countries like South Korea and Japan to open their markets to our beef if we don’t open our borders to countries like Canada. Galen says there is no problem with animals coming into the country for slaughter, but when you are talking about animals for breeding and herd-replacement purposes, that is a different story. Galen says those are animals that could show-up positive for BSE years down the road and it would not reflect on the Canadian cattle industry but on the U.S. cattle industry. “That is exactly what happened back in December, 2003 that caused us to have problems with Japan and South Korea in the first place.” That first BSE-positive cow in the United States originated in Canada.
Galen does think the political pressure is growing on USDA to reconsider the plan. Canada has a much smaller cattle industry yet they have had more BSE-positives than the U.S. “There’s something that has happened there that is not quite right,” and Galen says if we allow those animals in, we are asking for trouble.
