State won’t check Canada’s cows

YAKIMA – State officials do not plan additional inspections of Canadian cattle heading into Washington now that an import ban has been lifted, the state agriculture director said.

Montana Gov. Brian Schweitzer, a rancher, has ordered additional checks in his state to verify that Canadian cows meet new restrictions set by the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

Schweitzer has said he plans to urge other states to do the same. But Valoria Loveland, Washington’s agriculture director, said she doesn’t plan separate state inspections of imported animals.

“We are working with USDA, telling them we want to know how many cows are coming and where they are going so we can trace them, and they’ve agreed to do that,” Loveland said Thursday.

The United States banned Canadian cattle in May 2003 following Canada’s first case of mad cow disease, a fatal brain-wasting disease also called bovine spongiform encephalopathy or BSE.

The ban was about to end in March when a federal judge granted a livestock organization a court order keeping the prohibition in place.

A federal appeals court threw out the injunction last week and the first truckload of Canadian cattle crossed the border Monday.

Federal officials already rely on state veterinarians and inspectors to verify ownership and shipping manifests for ages and proper identification, Loveland said.

State vets also have authority to physically inspect cattle that change ownership.

The United States’ first mad cow case involved a Canadian-born Holstein dairy cow found in Mabton in December 2003.