MAD COW DISEASE

U.S. Senate votes to keep Canadian cattle out of United States The Senate voted Thursday to overturn the Bush administration's decision to allow Canadian cattle into the country again nearly two years after they were banned because of mad cow disease. The White House said Bush would veto the measure if it ever reaches his desk, warning that continuing to refuse Canadian beef would damage efforts to persuade other countries to buy U.S. beef. The Senate's 52-46 vote was to reject the Agriculture Department's decision to begin resuming imports of Canadian cows under 30 months of age beginning next week. A similar measure has been introduced in the House, but leaders there have scheduled no vote on it. "They've got mad-cow disease," said Sen. Kent Conrad, D-N.D. "Now the question is, should we run the risk of opening our border to livestock imports from Canada, when the evidence demonstrates clearly they're not enforcing their regulations to reduce the risk to them and to us?"....
Johann’s To Lobby House To Allow Canada Cattle Imports Johanns said he was "disappointed" with the Senate vote and warned that it "undermines the U.S. efforts to promote science-based regulations, complicates U.S. negotiations to reopen foreign markets to U.S. beef and would perpetuate the economic disruption of the beef and cattle industry." The resolution, a means by which Congress can reject regulatory rules made by federal agencies as provided for in the 1996 Congressional Review Act, must also be approved by the House of Representatives and signed by U.S. President George W. Bush to go into effect and cancel the USDA rule. The White House confirmed Bush would veto the measure, and warned that continuing to refuse Canadian beef would damage efforts to persuade other countries to buy U.S. beef, The Associated Press reported Thursday. U.S. industry groups such as the Food Products Association and the American Meat Institute have denounced the Senate action....
Canadian Ranchers See Politics in Ruling Some ranchers in Western Canada believe the decision by a U.S. federal judge to block indefinitely the resumption of their cattle crossing into the United States is another example of American protectionism as well as botched politics by their own leaders. Their anger was compounded Thursday when the U.S. Senate voted to overturn the Bush administration's decision to lift a ban next Monday. The ban was imposed on Canadian cattle nearly two years ago because of fears over mad cow disease. Danny Rosehill of the Olds Auction Mart in Calgary said U.S. District Judge Richard Cebull's ruling Wednesday was not only biased in favor of cattlemen in Montana, but indicative of the increasingly testy relations between the world's largest trading partners....
Length of CAN border delay unclear A federal judge in Montana temporarily blocked the Bush administration's plan to reopen the border to young Canadian cattle on Monday. The length of the delay isn't clear. U.S. District Judge Richard Cebull in Billings, Mont., granted the request for a preliminary injunction brought by a ranchers group that argued the reopening would expose their cattle -- and U.S. consumers -- to mad-cow disease, the fatal brain wasting ailment diagnosed in four Canadian-born cattle over the past 22 months. Judge Cebull, who tangled with the U.S. Department of Agriculture last year over its plan to allow certain cuts of Canadian beef back into the U.S., ordered federal lawyers and the ranchers' group -- R-CALF United Stockgrowers of America -- to agree within 10 days on a date for a hearing on whether he should issue a permanent injunction against the plan for importing live animals. Judge Cebull's ruling is a blow to the Bush administration's attempt to create a new international standard for doing business with countries that have a low incidence of mad-cow disease, formally known as bovine spongiform encephalopathy. Until recently, the U.S., like most nations, simply shut its borders to infected countries. The Bush administration's attitude changed when the December 2003 discovery of an infected Holstein dairy cow in Washington state prompted scores of countries to ban U.S. beef , extinguishing a $3 billion annual export market for U.S. meatpackers. By accepting cattle under the age of 30 months from Canada, the U.S. government is trying to show countries such as Japan and South Korea that it is safe for them to import U.S. beef again. Mad-cow disease, which primarily afflicts cattle that are several years old, is hard to detect in cattle under the age of 30 months....
Canada May Boost Cattle-Rancher Aid After U.S. Ruling Canada may boost subsidies for the country's struggling cattle ranchers after a U.S. court decided against lifting restrictions on cattle exports, Finance Minister Ralph Goodale said. The government ``will need to assess'' whether the C$1.5 billion ($1.2 billion) paid to ranchers since the May 2003 discovery of an Alberta animal infected with mad cow disease is enough, Goodale told reporters in Halifax, Nova Scotia, today, according to his spokesman, John Embury....
Canadian cattle pose no new health risk to American beef consumers: experts Keeping Canadian cows from crossing the 49th parallel won't safeguard U.S. beef consumers from the human form of mad cow disease, experts on prion diseases say. ``I do not feel that there is a rational health reason to prohibit the import of Canadian cattle to the U.S.,'' Canadian prion expert Dr. Neil Cashman said Thursday as hurdles continued to mount to the reopening of the American border. ``The movement of the U.S. and Canadian herds across the border and the similarities in feeding practices of the two countries prior to and after 1997 make the risk of BSE the same in both countries _ which is extremely low, but not zero.'' Dr. Jean-Philippe Deslys, a prion expert from France, shares Cashman's view that the risk associated with Canadian beef is indistinguishable from that of American beef. ``The two countries are considered at the same level of risk,'' said Deslys, a research scientist and expert adviser to the World Health Organization and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. ``It's logical to open the frontier.''....
'Keep U.S. Beef Safe!' The Ranchers-Cattlemen's Action Legal Fund, United Stockgrowers of America (R-CALF USA) urged consumers today to tell their grocery store managers, butchers, mayors, governors, members of Congress and local health officials: `Keep U.S. Beef Safe.' This call-for-action is part of a nationwide campaign to stop federal officials from dropping crucial food safety protections for imported beef, specifically from Canada. Four cases of Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy, a deadly disease also known as mad cow, have been identified in Canadian cattle since May 2003. "The United States has the safest beef in the world, and we want to keep it that way. Even with increased testing we have yet to find one single native case of BSE in U.S. born and raised cattle. For this reason, we are urging consumers to speak out: `Keep U.S. Beef Safe,'" wrote Leo McDonnell, Jr., President of R-CALF USA, in a letter to every Member of Congress, Governor, the U.S. Conference of Mayors and the National League of Cities....
Financiers sell Creekstone The majority financial owner of Creekstone Farms Premium Beef has sold its interest to a private investment company that will help Creekstone grow and position itself better in the marketplace, the two companies said. The sale occurs as Creekstone continues a year-long battle with the Agriculture Department to allow the company to test all the animals it slaughters for mad-cow disease. Creekstone officials contend that if the company were allowed to test, it would regain business with Japan, which has imposed a ban on American beef imports since December 2003, when a case of mad -cow disease was discovered in Washington state. "We will continue to aggressively pursue to BSE test (bovine spongiform encephalopathy, or mad cow)," Pentz said, "regardless of whether overseas markets are open or shut."....