U.S. ‘mad cow’ may impact Canada

News of a case of “mad cow” disease in a dairy cow in Washington state last Tuesday (Dec. 23) has heightened the threat to the beef industry in Canada already reeling from a similar discovery in Alberta back in May, Canadian agricultural officials say.
Furthermore, preliminary investigations indicate the animal stricken with bovine spongiform encephalopathy (the scientific name of mad cow disease) may have originated in Canada.
The Ontario Federation of Agriculture said much will depend on how the Americans choose to deal with the looming crisis in their own country.
“Rumours have it they’re going to hold off on re-introduction of [Canadian] cattle into the U.S.,” OFA president Ron Bonnett said yesterday from southern Ontario when reached by the Times on his cell phone.
“It depends on how they react,” he remarked.
“There could be one of two reactions,” he noted. “The preferred reaction is to treat this as a North American problem and make sure the protocols are put into place to deal with it.
“The second approach would be—because they have been shut out of export trade—to slap shut their own borders to all Canadian product.
“If that happens, it would be a disaster for us,” he warned.
Bonnett stressed the role of the federal government in mitigating the damage to the Canadian beef industry will be crucial in the days and weeks ahead.
“I know that [federal Agriculture minister] Bob Speller has been working very hard to get some kind of North American agreement,” he noted.
Bonnett also said the actual origin of the animal in question may well be irrelevant since there has been so much cross-border trading of live animals over the years that the livestock industries of both countries are virtually one.
“For the past 40 years, cattle have moved as though the border doesn’t even exist,” he remarked.
However, with presidential and congressional elections coming up in 2004, Bonnett expressed concern the U.S. could be tempted to take harsh protectionist measures—as it has done in other areas, such as softwood lumber.
“That makes me a bit nervous,” he admitted. “The U.S. reaction has typically been to take action first and worry about legality later.”
Until this latest development, Canadian beef exports to the U.S. had returned to roughly 50 percent of pre-BSE levels, with boneless cuts of beef certified to be less than 30 months of age making up the bulk of them.
However, live animals still are not permitted into the U.S. from Canada.
For Mike McMorris, executive director of the Ontario Cattlemen’s Association, it is a case of déja vu all over again.
“It’s kind of like reliving our own situation, but we’re still in the early stages, where there’s a lot of talk and a shortage of facts,” McMorris from the OCA’s headquarters in Guelph.
Like Bonnett, McMorris is convinced the point of origin of the infected cow in Washington state is not really the issue. What matters, he says, is how things proceed from here.
“DNA sampling should determine where the cow came from, but in reality, that doesn’t matter,” he remarked. “What we’ve been telling people is let’s just do a reality check. Let’s go back to what we know.”
What we know, he added, is the North American beef and livestock market is so integrated that it won’t matter where the animal came from.
“Another thing we know is we have a learned a lot about BSE from the U.K. experience and additional safeguards have been in place since May 20 [when the single BSE-infected cow was discovered in Alberta].”
In fact, says McMorris, Canada is ahead of the United States in tracking the history of cattle partly as a result of that experience.
“They [the Americans] have not moved as quickly as we have,” he charged. “They do not have the national identification system we have.
“My theory is it may be the best thing if it did come from Canada,” McMorris noted. “We’ve already crashed our market and we’re slowly coming out of it, but if they [the Americans] crash, they’ll drag us down with them.”
But all that may mean nothing if the Americans adopt a siege mentality and slam the door on Canadian beef. McMorris, though, thinks things still could work out for both American and Canadian beef producers if cooler heads prevail.
“If people remember the basics and follow through the investigation, the result will probably be only a temporary delay in re-opening the [U.S.] border to Canadian beef,” he remarked.