Arrow-right Camera
The Spokesman-Review Newspaper
Spokane, Washington  Est. May 19, 1883

Court to determine Canadian beef status

Associated Press

CALGARY, Alberta – The U.S. government expects to overturn a lower court ruling that has delayed its plans to reopen the U.S.-Canadian border to live Canadian cattle.

The four-month-old injunction sealing the border to cattle exports was “ill considered” and not based on scientific facts, U.S. Treasury Secretary John Snow said Saturday.

“We’re pressing hard; the Justice Department is appealing that injunction, seeking to get that injunction removed, and I trust that we’ll be successful in those efforts,” Snow said as two days of bilateral trade talks came to an end.

The appeal, scheduled to be heard July 13 in Seattle, will be followed very closely by Canada, federal Finance Minister Ralph Goodale said.

In June, attorneys general from Montana, Connecticut, Nevada, New Mexico, North Dakota and South Dakota signed a friend-of-the-court brief supporting the closure.

Live Canadian cattle have been banned from the United States for more than two years, since mad cow disease was first found on an Alberta farm. But the two governments agree that enough safeguards are in place to resume trade.

Canada’s beef industry, which has sustained more than $7 billion (Canadian) in export losses, is concerned about the Seattle appeal before the San Francisco-based 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, and about a July 27 court hearing in Montana, where a ranchers group is seeking a permanent ban on Canadian beef.

U.S. District Court Judge Richard Cebull of Billings, who blocked the U.S. Agriculture Department’s plan to reopen the border to Canadian cattle in March, is scheduled to hear arguments from the Ranchers-Cattlemen Action Legal Fund.

The group is expected to argue that Canada’s three cases of bovine spongiform encephalopathy – the scientific name for mad cow disease – prove that northern herds are unsafe.

The recent discovery of the disease in a cow born and raised in Texas undermines that argument, Goodale said Saturday.

The American Meat Institute has increased its lobbying efforts to get the border reopened, contending that numerous U.S. packing plants could be permanently shut down if the border remains closed.