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R-CALF: files Complaint To Stop USDA’s Dangerous OTM Rule

HAY MAKER

Well-known member
R-CALF: Plaintiffs File Complaint To Stop USDA’s Dangerous OTM Rule



Billings, Mont. (October 29, 2007) – R-CALF USA, along with 10 other plaintiffs, has filed a complaint against the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) in the District Court – District of South Dakota, Northern Division (District Court) in an effort to prevent the agency decision from opening the Canadian border to imports of live cattle born after March 1, 1999, and beef products from cattle over 30 months of age. USDA’s decision, often referred to as the OTM (over 30 month) Rule, is scheduled to take effect Nov. 19. Eleven cases of bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) have been detected in Canadian-born cattle, seven since the beginning of last year.



Individual plaintiffs include South Dakota cattle producers Herman Schumacher, Robert Mack, Ernie Mertz, and Wayne Nelson. Plaintiff organizations include: the South Dakota Stockgrowers Association; the Center for Food Safety; the Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease Foundation; Food & Water Watch; Public Citizen, which has 90,000 members; and, the Consumer Federation of America, with 50 million members.



“The OTM rule creates an unjustified and unnecessary increased risk of infection of the U.S. cattle herd with BSE, and of importing beef contaminated with BSE into the U.S., which will expose U.S. consumers to increased risk of a fatal disease,” said R-CALF USA CEO Bill Bullard. “By USDA’s own analysis, it is a virtual certainty that the OTM Rule will result in the importation of Canadian cattle infected with BSE, the meat from which will enter the U.S. food supply, and that the OTM Rule also will result in the importation of billions of pounds of meat from OTM cattle slaughtered in Canada, which almost certainly include products from cattle infected with BSE. There also lies the possibility of contamination of U.S. cattle feed caused from the use of Canadian cattle products, like blood, in the manufacturing of cattle feed.



“The OTM Rule will expose U.S. cattle producers to severe economic hardship because of the reduced marketability of U.S. beef as a result of commingling domestic product with potentially contaminated beef of Canadian origin,” he continued. “We have export customers who refuse to accept beef from the United States unless it is segregated from Canadian product. R-CALF does not believe opening the Canadian border to older cattle and all beef products will increase our export markets. These all are risks that R-CALF finds unacceptable.



Unfortunately, USDA seems all too willing to put the interests of a few big multinational companies ahead of the much larger concerns of the country's beef consumers and the 800,000 independent cattle producers in the United States.”



“It’s hard to fathom why the USDA would move to eliminate a critical protection against BSE at a time when the public is increasingly concerned about the safety of imported foods,” said Chris Waldrop, Director of the Food Policy Institute at Consumer Federation of America.



“The decision to allow risky older cattle from Canada to enter the U.S. shows once again that the USDA is more concerned about facilitating trade than protecting consumers’ health,” said Wenonah Hauter, executive director of Food & Water Watch. “Until the U.S. strengthens the rules for preventing the spread of BSE when cattle are slaughtered, we have no business importing older cattle from a country where the disease is prevalent.”



“Consumers expect the government to protect the food supply from the risk of BSE, but instead USDA has taken an illegal step that creates a new food import health risk,” said Joseph Mendelson, legal director for the Center for Food Safety.



--BSE is an unusual disease that requires an unusually vigilant response. If cattle in the U.S. become infected, there is no drug that can keep them from dying, and there is no vaccine that can keep them from getting infected. The same is true for the human version, which is believed to come from consuming infected meat.



--The stakes are enormous: The 2003 discovery of a single case of BSE in a cow imported into the U.S. from Canada virtually shut down the U.S. beef export market, which is still trying to recover, costing the industry (and the U.S. balance of trade) billions of dollars.



--Since even a single incident of BSE infection would do serious damage to U.S. beef exports and has the potential as well to introduce an incurable disease into the U.S. cattle herd, no one should take comfort in USDA’s predictions that there will be only a “negligible” amount of infected cattle and beef coming from Canada.



--Canada imported BSE-infected cattle from the UK in the 1990s. There is no indication that the U.S. ever did. Canada continues to find BSE even in cattle born as little as four years ago. Both of the only cases found in U.S.-born cattle were in animals born in the early 1990s. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has cautioned that Canadian cattle are 26 times more likely to test positive for BSE than U.S. cattle.



--Worldwide experience shows that banning cattle parts from cattle feed is not enough. BSE contamination of other types of feed can infect cattle through cross-contamination at the feed mill, mis-feeding at the farm, and other unavoidable routes. Canada attributes its recent cases of BSE to just such a source, and the Canadian government this summer started keeping cattle parts out of all animal feed. But Canadian cattle parts will now be entering the U.S., where they can still be used in animal feed and can still contaminate U.S. cattle. The World Organization for Animal Health (OIE) recently told the U.S. that it has insufficient safeguards to prevent the spread of BSE for that reason.



--No one knows how many BSE-infected cattle there are or were in Canada. We know there were considerably more than the 11 cases discovered in Canadian-born cattle, because other infected cattle had to have been butchered or rendered to result in contamination of the feed of the 11 cattle discovered in three different provinces. We also know that many cattle that ate the same feed as the cattle found to have BSE were slaughtered and likely used in part to make animal feed. R-CALF USA agrees that Canada does not appear to have a BSE epidemic as severe as that of the United Kingdom, but relatively few cases in imported Canadian cattle can still cause BSE in the U.S. cattle herd that would take many years to eradicate.



--Because there may be a lag of up to seven years or more between when a calf becomes infected and when that infection has taken over its brain enough to be detected, there can be many cases of BSE-infected cattle in Canada that are not detected before they are imported into the U.S. or before they are slaughtered in Canada for export to the United States. For the same reason, U.S. feedlots, slaughterhouses, and border inspectors do not have the ability to keep BSE-infected Canadian cattle out of the U.S. or out of the human food chain. Likewise, there is no test for BSE contamination in meat or in blood products.



“USDA is downplaying the risk of BSE, and this is one of those situations where a low probability of a very bad consequence is not acceptable,” Bullard concluded. “If BSE is introduced into the U.S. herd, there is no test that can find all the infected animals and no medication that can stop its spread. Hoping that the problem will go away without demonstrable evidence that it will is folly, and knowingly importing infected cattle and meat when scientists agree we do not have sufficient safeguards in place to prevent the spread of the disease is unjustifiable
.”
 

flounder

Well-known member
SD ranchers join lawsuit over mad cow disease
Sioux Falls Argus Leader - Sioux Falls,SD,USA
The 41-page lawsuit - which includes South Dakota plaintiffs from Herreid, Watertown, Bowdle, Langford and Rapid City - was filed in US District Court. ...


http://www.argusleader.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20071029/NEWS/710290318/1001


http://ranchers.net/forum/viewtopic.php?t=21908


TSS
 

QUESTION

Well-known member
Check the posts from a couple of months ago. I called it - Not enough evidence was put forward at rule 2 hearings to keep the boder closed now a backdoor attempt thru the courts to keep the border shut. And in a court that is in south dakota :shock: too bad you know you need a stacked deck to even have your claim considered. It would have been nice to see r-calf file in a neutral state like california but we all know they would have not gotten anything done. Oh well i hope you guys bought enough jurors and judges so if you complaint stands it can be over turned in another juristiction. You guys are just delaying the inevitible.
A final thought - why was it proposed by r-calfer's that OTM's be allowed in if MCOOL was implemented immediately if they are such a hazzard? Kinda looks like r-calf officials should have kept their mouths shut as they are going to be biting each other in the butt. :oops: Anyone care to explain ? Or are you guys going to ignore the hypocracy and not acknowledge this was done.
 

TimH

Well-known member
A neighbor of mine is having a complete herd dispersal sale in December.These are top-notch angus/simmX cattle(500+ head). He has his sale well advertised.
He has been getting calls from south of the Medicine Line,asking about his cows.
Thanks to some r-calfers ,on this site, proudly posting the names of r-calf members contributing through "rollover auctions", I have been able to match up some of these people with the names of the inquires my neighbor has recieved. TOO FUNNY!!!!! Talk about CHEAP IMPORTS!!!!!
DO AS I SAY, NOT AS I DO!!!

Laughing my ass off!!!!! :D :D :roll: :roll: :wink:
 

HAY MAKER

Well-known member
TimH said:
A neighbor of mine is having a complete herd dispersal sale in December.These are top-notch angus/simmX cattle(500+ head). He has his sale well advertised.
He has been getting calls from south of the Medicine Line,asking about his cows.
Thanks to some r-calfers ,on this site, proudly posting the names of r-calf members contributing through "rollover auctions", I have been able to match up some of these people with the names of the inquires my neighbor has recieved. TOO FUNNY!!!!! Talk about CHEAP IMPORTS!!!!!
DO AS I SAY, NOT AS I DO!!!

Laughing my ass off!!!!! :D :D :roll: :roll: :wink:

Me too!!!!!!I sure would like to see a 500 head herd of UTM cattle :D :D
good luck
 

Sandhusker

Well-known member
QUESTION said:
Check the posts from a couple of months ago. I called it - Not enough evidence was put forward at rule 2 hearings to keep the boder closed now a backdoor attempt thru the courts to keep the border shut. And in a court that is in south dakota :shock: too bad you know you need a stacked deck to even have your claim considered. It would have been nice to see r-calf file in a neutral state like california but we all know they would have not gotten anything done. Oh well i hope you guys bought enough jurors and judges so if you complaint stands it can be over turned in another juristiction. You guys are just delaying the inevitible.
A final thought - why was it proposed by r-calfer's that OTM's be allowed in if MCOOL was implemented immediately if they are such a hazzard? Kinda looks like r-calf officials should have kept their mouths shut as they are going to be biting each other in the butt. :oops: Anyone care to explain ? Or are you guys going to ignore the hypocracy and not acknowledge this was done.


What hearings?
 

Sandhusker

Well-known member
TimH said:
A neighbor of mine is having a complete herd dispersal sale in December.These are top-notch angus/simmX cattle(500+ head). He has his sale well advertised.
He has been getting calls from south of the Medicine Line,asking about his cows.
Thanks to some r-calfers ,on this site, proudly posting the names of r-calf members contributing through "rollover auctions", I have been able to match up some of these people with the names of the inquires my neighbor has recieved. TOO FUNNY!!!!! Talk about CHEAP IMPORTS!!!!!
DO AS I SAY, NOT AS I DO!!!

Laughing my ass off!!!!! :D :D :roll: :roll: :wink:

I see.... so you're telling us that R-CALF members are inquiring about Canadian breeding stock when breeding stock isn't allowed into this country....... :roll: Yeah, right.
 

Yanuck

Well-known member
Out of the frying pan into the fire as they say.....
from Rule 2
" Live cattle and other bovines (i.e., bison) for any use (including BREEDING) born on or after, March 1,1999.
The final rule is scheduled for publication in the September 18, 2007 Federal Register and becomes EFFECTIVE November 19, 2007."[/quote]
 

QUESTION

Well-known member
Sand H there was a comment period where concerned groups could come forward to make their comments and present their position to the USDA concerning rule 2. What would you call these mettings where arguments were made and presentations were made. Around here that is called a hearing. But you seem to want to argue somantics. So imform me what is correct terminology for this in the US?
 

Sandhusker

Well-known member
QUESTION said:
Sand H there was a comment period where concerned groups could come forward to make their comments and present their position to the USDA concerning rule 2. What would you call these mettings where arguments were made and presentations were made. Around here that is called a hearing. But you seem to want to argue somantics. So imform me what is correct terminology for this in the US?

Call it what it actually was, a dog and pony show. The USDA had their minds made up long before the comment period. There is no indication the USDA even read a single comment. R-CALF asked what percentage of the comments were for and what were agaist, pretty basic information if they were truly using the period to gauge public sentiment, and USDA couldn't answer.
 

QUESTION

Well-known member
Is seems you want complain. Go ahead, but do not complain about things you could be doing to recify the situation. IF r-calf could of presented enough evidence that was supported by accurate statistical data and clearly show evidence of immenent doom the USDA would have not considered opening the border under rule 2. The hearings during the comment period of rule were open to anyone in the US. So do not say r-calf was ignored because of bias, it was simple r-calf didn't bring enough to the table. This smacks of sour grapes. As i expected the name calling and character assaniation of the USDA has started. I have read on here where Bush wouldn't allow the blocking of rule 2, so what do you expect to happen even if the complain is upheld. Again answer my question- r-calfer's would allow OTM from canada in without argument if MCOOL was implemented immediately. Explain the logic if Canadian OTM's are such a hazzard? Contradiction is not going to help the legitimaticy of r-calf maybe that is why groups ignore r-calf's arguments? Maybe it is the crying wolf syndrome?
 

Sandhusker

Well-known member
Q, " IF r-calf could of presented enough evidence that was supported by accurate statistical data and clearly show evidence of immenent doom the USDA would have not considered opening the border under rule 2."

Yeah, right. How did the USDA handle the evidence that your feed ban wasn't effective in March, 1999 like they claim? They were proved wrong 5 times. How about the OIE saying our feed ban isn't good enough? You don't get it.

Q, "The hearings during the comment period of rule were open to anyone in the US. So do not say r-calf was ignored because of bias, it was simple r-calf didn't bring enough to the table. This smacks of sour grapes"

Everybody was ignored. The plan was already set. They did this once before on the same issue. When you first got BSE, Secretery Venemann slipped up in answering reporters on a question concerning what the US was going to do. She said they would make a study, have a comment period, AND THEN OPEN THE BORDER. Now you tell me that comment period was going to make any difference at all. It's the same thing here. Why can't they tell how many was for and how many was against?

Q, " As i expected the name calling and character assaniation of the USDA has started."

I see..... Do you think I can pull up any of your posts concerning the USDA's handling the BSE situation down here that might be somewhat negetive towards them?

Q, "I have read on here where Bush wouldn't allow the blocking of rule 2, so what do you expect to happen even if the complain is upheld."

Who the heck do you think is behind rule 2?


Q, "Again answer my question- r-calfer's would allow OTM from canada in without argument if MCOOL was implemented immediately."

Where are you coming up with that?
 

QUESTION

Well-known member
SandH the problem with saying the canadian feedban didn't work is that canadians had the same ban as the US first off, so how come your feedban would work and the canadian not. Secondly there is no way to know where the contamination came from as canada , we imported much of the supplements from the US, check stats canada. The numbers do not lie. As for the OIE rating Canada and the US the same up here we have documented more positives and a stricter feedban( NO LOOPHOLES )as well as a SRM management protocall. So No essentially the US doesn't have a feedban as cattle are still eating cattle, by the way that is how bse spreads. So you are the one who does not get it. Maybe work as hard on getting a real feedban as you do making rude comments.
Sorry but Venemann was 2 Ag. Sec's a long time ago in terms of this. Still sounds like sour grapes , if the evidence was so overwhelming to keep the border closed, why not go to the mass media they really like the horrific story? Or is that too easy or is it there is no evidence other than anecdotal. You know the old how do you know that is true? ,because " i said so" thing. Why not go NOW to the mass media and expose the dangers to the consumer if the US allows canadian OTMs in? It is an easy thing to do i am sure you could find a e-mail adresss or i could find you one to send your evidence to blow up the plans of the USDA.
As for the USDA i have my opinions on them, but i do not call them names in my criticisms. Nor do it flip flop on my opinion of them as some do.
If this is such a huge conspiracy why has nobody come forward to expose it? :roll:
As for linking the border opening of canadian OTM cattle to MCOOL do you need me to go back in the archives and find all the r-calfers comments on how they have no problem with OTM's as long as MCOOL was implemented immediately. Maybe that shows the real reasons for keeping the border closed. It stuck in my mind with rule 2 comments period closing that r-calfer's would be open to OTM cattle if they were so dangerous. But i guess when you spew so much you may get mixed up from time to time. Oh well, it is posted in the archives.
If everything you said was true how come you or some other person hasn't gone to the press and exposed this conspiracy, colussion and corruption with in the government and beef business. If you have evidence you and r-calf would have nothing to fear. So come forward to the mass media if you have evidence . Would you not be a hero for saving the US comsumers?
 

Sandhusker

Well-known member
Q, "SandH the problem with saying the canadian feedban didn't work is that canadians had the same ban as the US first off, so come your feedban would work and the canadian not."

It probably wouldn't. That is exactly a reason that you wouldn't import from a BSE positive country.

Q, "Secondly there is no way to know where the contamination came from as canada , we imported much of the supplements from the US, check stats canada."

Where it came from is not the issue. Regardless if where it came from, you have it.

Q, " As for the OIE rating Canada and the US the same...."

We're the same because that's what the USDA wants. We qualify for a higher rating, but they didn't apply for that as that would give their opponents to opening a loaded gun. Pure politics.

Q, "Sorry but Venemann was 2 Ag. Sec's a long time ago in terms of this."

Venemann was the previous Sec. - only 3 years ago. The Sec. is just a puppet for the President, that is obvious as not a single thing changed under Johanns. Same policy, just different talking heads.

Q, "the evidence was so overwhelming to keep the border closed, why not go to the mass media they really like the horrific story?"

R-CALF already bought a full-page ad in the NY Times. Just ask Tam, she can't accurately tell you what it said, but she knows it happened.

Q, "If this is such a huge conspiracy why has nobody come forward to expose it? "

There is no conspiracy, this is the modus operandi of this outfit. Cater to the big packers and everything is to be sacrficed to the god of free trade.

Q, "As for linking the border opening of canadian OTM cattle to MCOOL do you need me to go back in the archives and find all the r-calfers comments on how they have no problem with OTM's as long as MCOOL was implemented immediately."

Don't confuse an individual member's opinion with official policy.
 

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