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Alan Guebert
It?s a mad, mad, mad world
Another week of the US Dept. of Agriculture?s
?Abundance of Caution? road show brought further evidence of America?s
porous food safety net and the costs American ranchers and farmers are
paying for the holes.
On Monday, Jan. 5, USDA announced it had ordered
the depopulation--farm-talk for wholesale slaughter--of 450 calves on a
Sunnyside, WA farm where the calf born to the Dec. 9 American mad cow
resides. USDA explained that all the calves needed to be slaughtered to
ensure the mad cow?s calf was eliminated.
The fact that the entire herd must be dispatched
because one bull calf within it could not be positively identified does
not inspire confidence in either our country?s livestock recordkeeping
rules or our government?s ability to trace targeted food or livestock.
Then again, USDA did not inspire confidence in its
press release announcing the depopulation: it referred to the calf?s
certifiably mad cow mother as ?the heifer infected with BSE prior to
the heifer?s slaughter.?
Calling a six-a-half year old Holstein female a
heifer is akin to calling Grandma Moses a girl. Both miss the mark by
years.
That same day, USDA again confessed it could not
find the bulk of the Canadian dairy animals that had accompanied the
soon-to-be mad cow into the US in 2001. Indeed, 70 of the 81 animals
are yet to be found, noted USDA.
Do the math and what USDA did say is that only 14%
of that 2001 shipment has been accounted for; 86% are still missing.
Never fear, though, because ?USDA has good leads on the whereabouts of
many of these animals,? the department offered.
On Tues. Jan. 6, USDA announced that it had DNA
evidence in-hand--at least to ?a high degree of certainty,?--which
shows the BSE positive cow slaughtered in Washington state Dec. 9
originated from a dairy farm in Alberta, Canada.
In a teleconference later that day, Dr. Ron
DeHaven, chief veterinary officer at USDA, said the DNA evidence, when
added to the slim US paper trail and the far-better Canadian records
trail, made the department ?confident in the accuracy of this
trace-back.?
So, if it?s clearly Canadian ...
Based on USDA information then, it?s a clear fact
that the only two known BSE-positive cattle found in North America
during 2003--and the only one ever found in the US--are clearly
Canadian by birth.
So why are US cattlemen still paying the punishing
price of having their $3 billion beef export market closed around the
globe? The explanation is multi-faceted, but three elements stand above
all others.
First, the rest of the world cannot be assured that
the beef they buy in the US is purely American.
For instance, according to published data, 300,000
to 400,000 cattle roaming the US currently are of Canadian origin.
Without adequate records and a method for quick, reliable trace-back,
foreign buyers will shy away from American beef because they don?t want
another nation?s beef diseases transshipped to them through the US.
Or, to put it another way, can you say ?Country of
Origin Labeling??
USDA still cannot. And this week brought new
evidence of how far USDA?s open opposition to COOL has taken the
department from what has become an accepted--and in the case of Japan,
a demanded--global food-selling standard.
When USDA?s chief vet, Dr. DeHaven, was asked
point-blank in a Jan. 6 teleconference, ?Given these (DNA) results, is
this now a Canadian problem?? DeHaven put a smile on every Canadian
beef producer?s face with his answer.
?It's a North American issue, and has been,
continues to be,? said the good doctor, ?and really (it) became a North
American issue on May 20th with the finding of the first North American
native-born case.?
Dr. Brian Evans, the chief veterinary officer of
the Canadian Food Inspection Agency who shared the telephone with
DeHaven Jan. 6, was only too happy to quickly agree.
?... I am very encouraged,? said Evans, ?and have
always been very respectful of the fact that this has never been an
isolated issue, one side or the other, but an issue that we both have
taken on with the same degree of commitment ...?
To be fair, DeHaven could hardly have answered any
other way. After all, there?s a passel of Canadian cattle moseying
around American pastures, barnyards and feedlots. Until all are
accounted for--and given USDA?s poor record so far, the signs for that
eventuality are less than hopeful--American producers will be saddled
with the specter of mad cow until, well, until the cows come home.
The second element that keeps the world embargo on
US beef in place is the old goose/gander problem.
When BSE was found in Europe, the US immediately
banned beef imports from nations found to have mad cow. USDA reacted
just as swiftly when Japan recognized its BSE woes two years ago. Ditto
for Canada last May 20.
But now America wants the 43 nations that have
imposed partial or complete import bans of US beef to lift those bans
only weeks after disclosing the nation?s first--and so far, only--BSE
case Dec. 23.
And that despite USDA?s head vet admitting this
week the US beef herd contains thousands of cattle with a Maple Leaf
brand on the flanks.
In short, lifting the import bans any time soon
ain?t gonna? happen soon regardless of how many or how often USDA
officials jawbone reluctant trading partners.
Look at it this way. Can you imagine how red-faced
USDA officials were in late December when they met with Japanese trade
officials in Tokyo to convince the Japanese to lift their US import ban
even as the US continues to ban Japanese beef imports?
Redder than the rump of a Red Hereford, we suspect.
And, to no one?s surprise, Japan politely refused.
Hey, it noted, what?s good for the goose is good for the gander.
The third part of the explanation is equally
clear-cut: our trading partners concerns over America?s commitment to
safe food continue to build. It?s an issue we handed to them on a
silver platter. Cattle raised with growth-promoting steroids. Milk
laced with bovine growth hormones. Food produced with genetically
modified organisms.
Moreover, while USDA and its boss Secretary of
Agriculture Ann Veneman repeatedly point out that the government?s BSE
testing protocol is ? 47 times the recommended international standard,?
in truth the US picks and chooses which ?international standards? it
implements.
For example, the BSE standards Veneman refers to
are set by the World Organization for Animal Health, a Paris-based
group with representatives of 166 nations that goes by its French
initials OEI.
As BSE was wreaking havoc throughout Europe, OEI
recommended bans on slaughterhouse stun guns and machines that
mechanically strip meat from cattle skulls and backbones as two simple
ways to reduce the likelihood of introducing mad-cow meat into the
human food chain.
The US, however, never adopted those standards
until Veneman announced them, along with others, in a Dec. 30 press
conference, one week after she announced mad cow was in America. The
Secretary portrayed the changes as ?steps we are taking to further
protect our system.?
No one in the follow-up press conference, though,
asked Veneman the pregnant question: Why weren?t these steps in place
before the mad cow popped up Dec. 9?
Without Country of Origin Labeling, with the goose
and gander rule dominating the international meat trade and because of
USDA?s failure to ban slaughtering practices that add to meat safety
woes, the world is no longer the American cattleman?s oyster.
Of checkoffs and mad cow
According to the Good Book (yes, that Good Book) there?s a special spot reserved in the Infernal Regions for those who prey on the misfortune of others.
Well, make room for the National Cattlemen?s Beef Assoc.
NCBA, who has fought Country of Origin Labeling hoof-and-horn and sponsored the legal defense of the thrice declared unconstitutional beef checkoff, is angling for a role--and more importantly, a new funding stream--in the developing national animal identification program spurred by the discovery of mad cow disease in America.
According to a Jan. 8 Wall Street Journal story titled ?Cattlemen Saddle Up for Duels Over Rules,? USDA is ?sill looking at the details of the identification system ...? Secretary of Agriculture Ann Veneman announced Dec. 30.
Those details, explained the Journal, include ?... whether (the ID) system will be voluntary. Another question is whether it will be run by a consortium of industry representatives, as Mr. Keys would like.?
Mr. Keys is none other than Chandler Keys, the NCBA?s chief lobbyist in Washington and point man to kill COOL and retain the checkoff.
Indeed, COOL, the checkoff and the mad-cow inspired national animal ID system have suddenly dovetailed nicely to address NCBA?s biggest future problem--money.
NCBA is the beef checkoff?s largest recipient contractor. As such, the loss of checkoff contracts would pummel NCBA.
And that could happen. On Oct. 16, 2003 a federal appeals court affirmed a 2002 lower court decision that the national beef checkoff violated the Constitution?s First Amendment guarantee of freedom of speech.
The US Solicitor General is now considering to appeal the case the US Supreme Court. That appeal must be filed by Feb. 19. If an appeal is not filed by that date, the original court decision stands: the beef checkoff will be dead. (Other federal checkoffs, such as the pork and soybean checkoffs, will die, also.)
In early-January, the solicitor general asked for and received a one-month extension to file the beef checkoff appeal. According to legal sources close to the case, the extension was requested because USDA and the solicitor general?s office are feuding over to even ask for a Supreme Court rehearing. USDA wants to file; the solicitor general is unsure because the case is a three-time loser in federal court.
With the appeal undecided and mad cow in the US, NCBA, say sources, is now seeking to cover its bets--and it budgetary hole should the checkoff stop--by carving out a role in any future national animal ID program. The role, they continue, could vary from managing the entire program for the US cattle industry, maintaining the extensive ID databases required or simply promoting the program.
Whatever NCBA?s role, the clear goal, say the sources, if for the cattle group to secure a new, perhaps larger, stream of sustaining revenue.
We are not surprised; after all, cattlemen have long followed the rule which urges them to make hay while the sun is shining.
Mad cow in America is hardly a sunny moment, however. Yet NCBA is angling to gain what could be a substantial foothold--one dripping with money--in a government sponsored program at the same time most US cattlemen are getting their (non-mad) brains kicked in because of a near-global ban on US beef.
Which, incidentally, could have been largely avoided had COOL been the law of the land.
© 2004 ag comm
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