Continuing to ban importation of cattle and bone-in beef from Canada is an unwarranted obstacle that’s harming the American meat-packing industry. The industry, worth nearly $80 billion a year nationally, is important to the Colorado economy. Cattle make up more than half our $4.7 billion agricultural output.
The May 2003 import ban was imposed after bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) was found in a cow in Canada. BSE also was identified in an older cow exported to Washington state, and recently in another animal in the U.S.
If there was a genuine problem with the safety of Canadian beef, a ban would be quite in order. BSE, known as mad cow disease, decimated British and other European herds in the 1980s and was linked to several human deaths. The disease is transmitted through feed containing bone meal and brain, spinal cord and vertebral column tissue from infected cattle. Such feeds were banned in the U.S. and Canada in 1997.
U.S. officials reacted properly to the 2003 episode. Initially, the Department of Agriculture banned import of all Canadian cattle and beef. Later, the agency lifted the restriction on boneless beef from younger animals, and finally the USDA has concluded that there’s no remaining risk.
You’d think that would be the end of it, but the Ranchers-Cattlemen Action Legal Fund of Billings, Mont., won an injunction from home-state federal Judge Richard Cebull. His April 2004 ruling is under appeal.
The ban has set back the U.S. meat-processing industry. Some smaller plants have closed, eliminating about 6,300 jobs. In Greeley, Swift & Co., went from slaughtering 5,700 animals daily to 2,700, with 800 jobs lost. Weld County Commissioner Mike Geile says that a long term ban could be “a dramatic, tragic economic equation” for meat-packing communities like Greeley.
Supporters of the ban, including R-CALF and Sen. Ken Salazar, D-Colo., say the U.S. herd and public safety must be protected. In March, Salazar helped push through a Senate bill to override the USDA decision. President Bush has said he’ll veto the bill if it gets to his desk, as well he should.
Bill Bullard, CEO of R-CALF, says that the president is “aggressively pursuing a traditional free-trade model, but what we now have is a legitimate health risk.” Mark Dopp of the American Meat Institute, an industry trade group, disagrees. “We believe all trade should be restored,” he said. “The continued ban is causing huge structural changes in the American meat-packing industry.”
Canada used to export 1.2 million head of cattle annually for processing in the U.S., and American jobs have been lost to Canadian meat-packing plants that have stepped up production. (Beef prices are up, too. USDA says retail prices averaged a record $4.07 a pound last year, up 17 percent.
Canadian cattle that used to be shipped here are now being slaughtered in Canada, only to have the boneless beef shipped across the border to U.S. supermarkets.
Supporters of the ban would have us believe that the USDA, guardian of the food supply for a century, suddenly would put the American public at risk. We don’t buy it.
