BILLINGS, Mont., Oct. 30 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- 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."
Note: This is the first of a series of news releases about BSE that
R-CALF USA will issue in an effort to educate the general public as to why
the introduction of BSE into the U.S. must be prevented. To view the
complaint, visit the "BSE-Litigation" link at http://www.r-calfusa.com, or contact
R-CALF USA Communications Coordinator Shae Dodson. For media, Dodson also
has contact information for the other plaintiffs.
R-CALF USA (Ranchers-Cattlemen Action Legal Fund, United Stockgrowers
of America) is a national, non-profit organization dedicated to ensuring
the continued profitability and viability of the U.S. cattle industry.
R-CALF USA represents thousands of U.S. cattle producers on trade and
marketing issues. Members are located across 47 states and are primarily
cow/calf operators, cattle backgrounders, and/or feedlot owners. R-CALF USA
has more than 60 affiliate organizations and various main-street businesses
are associate members. For more information, visit http://www.r-calfusa.com or,
call 406-252-2516.
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SOURCE R-CALF United Stockgrowers of America
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CONTACT:
Shae Dodson, Communications Coordinator of
R-CALF United Stockgrowers of America, +1-406-672-8969,
sdodson@r-calfusa.com
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