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No Beef- No FTA

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Rehberg: Trade rep makes stand on beef



By NOELLE STRAUB

Billings Gazette Washington Bureau - Montana

Published on Thursday, October 04, 2007



WASHINGTON - Rep. Denny Rehberg, R-Mont., said Wednesday that U.S. Trade Representative Susan Schwab has assured him that the Bush administration will not push a free-trade agreement with South Korea until the country opens its market to U.S. beef.



In a meeting with Schwab, Rehberg told her he would not vote in favor of a trade agreement unless South Korea has started importing all U.S. beef products again.


"She looked me in the eye and said, 'I will not bring forward a Korean package for a vote in the Congress until the beef issue is solved,' " Rehberg said. "The good news is, she made the commitment and I take her at her word. And that's the strongest statement I've heard so far" from the Bush administration.


A bilateral trade deal between the two countries has been signed by the administration but awaits approval by Congress. Rehberg said he and Montana's Democratic senators, Max Baucus and Jon Tester, have pushed for the reopening.



Baucus chairs the Senate Finance Committee, which has jurisdiction over international trade agreements. He has vowed that South Korea will not get its free-trade agreement unless it reopens its beef market, and he told that to the Korean ambassador to the U.S. and its top trade negotiator when they visited Montana last year at his invitation.



In a prepared statement Wednesday, Baucus said he had made the same point to Schwab and that the next step is the Korean government's.



"I will not consider the Korea FTA in my committee until Korea abides by international standards," Baucus said. "That means it must permit the importation of U.S. beef, regardless of the age of the cattle and regardless of whether it has bones."



South Korea had been the third-largest market for U.S. beef before bovine spongiform encephalopathy, commonly known as mad cow disease, was found in 2003 in cattle inside the U.S. that had originated in Canada. South Korea then banned all imports of American beef. That move cost the U.S. beef industry $1 billion a year, Rehberg said.



South Korea has since lifted some of the restrictions. It accepts boneless beef from cattle less than 30 months old.



Rehberg said the country was using "false arguments" to keep its markets closed. "We have the safest meat products of any country in the world," he said.



Rehberg said that when he was in South Korea about a year ago with the Montana World Trade Center, he met with Korean officials.



"They had told me at that time it was imminent they were sending inspectors over to our packing plants in America and they would be willing to open up trade in weeks or months," Rehberg said. "Here we are a year later and still waiting."


billingsgazette.net
 

QUESTION

Well-known member
:roll: more r-crap propoganda. If the washington cow would have been the only animal with BSE your measures of closing the borders to canadian cattle would have worked to get acess to foreign markets. But there were endiginous US cases found that could not be traced back to another animal and that exposed the epidemic of BSE being hidden in the US.
Let Mad Max keep it up and closed the borders to South Korea and Canada like he wants and see where the US ends up. He is such a good little fascist.
 

Sandhusker

Well-known member
QUESTION said:
:roll: more r-crap propoganda. If the washington cow would have been the only animal with BSE your measures of closing the borders to canadian cattle would have worked to get acess to foreign markets. But there were endiginous US cases found that could not be traced back to another animal and that exposed the epidemic of BSE being hidden in the US.
Let Mad Max keep it up and closed the borders to South Korea and Canada like he wants and see where the US ends up. He is such a good little fascist.

R-CALF didn't write it, didn't put it out, and isn't even mentioned - but it's R-CALF propaganda? :lol: :lol:
 
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