Grandad
Well-known member
Editorial from Denver Post July 16
Sensible ruling on beef imports
A three-judge panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals seems to have sided with science against fear in lifting a Montana judge's injunction banning the importation of Canadian cattle.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture banned importation of Canadian beef in May 2003 after bovine spongiform encephalopathy, or BSE, was found in a cow in Canada. The disease, which decimated European herds in the 1980s and was linked to several human deaths, also was found in an older Canadian cow exported to Washington state, and more recently, in a U.S.-born cow in Texas.
The USDA relaxed the ban to allow importation of processed boneless Canadian beef and was about to reopen the border to live cattle last March when U.S. District Judge Richard Cebull in Montana issued a temporary injunction to stop that. Cebull acted on a request from the Ranchers-Cattlemen Action Legal Fund of Billings, Mont.
Cebull's order wasn't about protecting the public - it was short-sighted protectionism that ignores science on how BSE is spread. Worse, R-CALF's alarmism only feeds the hysteria that has kept Asian markets closed to U.S. beef.
And it has cost American consumers: Average prices for beef rose to a record $4.07 a pound - 17 percent higher than the previous record set last year. It also cost the American beef-packing industry about 8,000 jobs,
including about 800 at the Swift & Co. plant in Greeley. U.S. slaughterhouses used to process about 1.2 million head of Canadian cattle a year. Instead, Canadian packing houses processed the beef ultimately sold in American stores.
As Judge Wallace Tashima of the appeals court noted, the law "does invest the secretary of agriculture with a certain discretion." Judge Connie Callahan added that the USDA is "entitled to some deference. It's their whole job to keep up with the science to make those decisions." Exactly.
R-CALF posted a statement on its website saying, "We are disappointed in \[Thursday's\] ruling by the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. The 9th Circuit gave no reasons for their action, so there isn't much we can do until we see those reasons."
Meantime, even though R-CALF's main case doesn't go to trial before Cebull until July 27, federal agriculture officials say the cattle trucks from Canada could start rolling within a week. As they should.
Sensible ruling on beef imports
A three-judge panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals seems to have sided with science against fear in lifting a Montana judge's injunction banning the importation of Canadian cattle.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture banned importation of Canadian beef in May 2003 after bovine spongiform encephalopathy, or BSE, was found in a cow in Canada. The disease, which decimated European herds in the 1980s and was linked to several human deaths, also was found in an older Canadian cow exported to Washington state, and more recently, in a U.S.-born cow in Texas.
The USDA relaxed the ban to allow importation of processed boneless Canadian beef and was about to reopen the border to live cattle last March when U.S. District Judge Richard Cebull in Montana issued a temporary injunction to stop that. Cebull acted on a request from the Ranchers-Cattlemen Action Legal Fund of Billings, Mont.
Cebull's order wasn't about protecting the public - it was short-sighted protectionism that ignores science on how BSE is spread. Worse, R-CALF's alarmism only feeds the hysteria that has kept Asian markets closed to U.S. beef.
And it has cost American consumers: Average prices for beef rose to a record $4.07 a pound - 17 percent higher than the previous record set last year. It also cost the American beef-packing industry about 8,000 jobs,
including about 800 at the Swift & Co. plant in Greeley. U.S. slaughterhouses used to process about 1.2 million head of Canadian cattle a year. Instead, Canadian packing houses processed the beef ultimately sold in American stores.
As Judge Wallace Tashima of the appeals court noted, the law "does invest the secretary of agriculture with a certain discretion." Judge Connie Callahan added that the USDA is "entitled to some deference. It's their whole job to keep up with the science to make those decisions." Exactly.
R-CALF posted a statement on its website saying, "We are disappointed in \[Thursday's\] ruling by the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. The 9th Circuit gave no reasons for their action, so there isn't much we can do until we see those reasons."
Meantime, even though R-CALF's main case doesn't go to trial before Cebull until July 27, federal agriculture officials say the cattle trucks from Canada could start rolling within a week. As they should.
