Panel of judges hears plea from ranchers in mad cow case
07/13/2007
By JULIA SILVERMAN / Associated Press
A ranchers' group made a last-ditch appeal for further consideration of a ban on the import of Canadian cattle in front of a federal appeals court panel in Portland on Friday.
Their plea has already been rejected once by the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, and a Montana judge refused in early 2006 to overturn that decision, saying his "hands were tied" by the higher court's actions.
A temporary ban on Canadian cattle imports was put in place in May of 2003, after a cow in Alberta was found to have mad cow disease, then lifted in July of 2005, after U.S. officials got the go-ahead to do so from federal judges.
On Friday, lawyers for a group of cattle ranchers, the Ranchers Cattlemen Action Legal Fund United Stockgrowers of America, known as R-CALF, argued that new information required reconsideration of their case.
Russell Frye, a lawyer for R-CALF, said that a small handful of additional cases of mad cow disease have surfaced in Canada since previous decisions, and that the lower court had reached, "an incorrect conclusion that the Court has already resolved the merits of R-CALF's claims."
But Mark Stern, an attorney representing the U.S. Department of Agriculture, argued that the few additional cases of mad cow disease that have since surfaced are not a threat to the U.S. food system because of "preventative measures" that have since been put in place.
And he said R-CALF's lawyers failed to present any significantly new information to suggest that the court's previous rulings should be overturned.
The Portland judges appeared somewhat skeptical of R-CALF's arguments, noting the ongoing work by the agricultural agency on new rules for cattle imports and beef products.
Mad cow disease is the common name for bovine spongiform encephalopathy, or BSE. People who eat meat tainted with BSE can contract a degenerative, fatal brain disorder called variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, or vCJD. More than 150 people died from the disorder following a 1986 outbreak in the United Kingdom.
U.S. meat processors and packers have opposed the rehearing, instead supporting the USDA's conclusion that Canadian cattle was safe. In the 2003 Canadian outbreak, there were five confirmed cases of BSE, out of an estimated national herd of 17 million cattle.
The U.S. cattle industry is still facing some fallout from the Canadian mad cow episode, after facing widespread bans and millions of dollars in losses in the immediate wake of the outbreak. Limited restrictions remain in place in Korea, Singapore and Egpyt, according to R-CALF.
Stern said a decision could come within two to four months.