Forget the Americans, let's build Canada's industry

March 7, 2005 -
Globe and Mail
Page B2
Deborah Yedlin
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/ArticleNews/TPStory/LAC/20050307/RYEDLIN07/Columnists/Idx

Columnist Yedlin writes that Canada's beef industry must be feeling a bit like Charlie Brown today; duped yet again by Lucy into kicking that football just one more time only to have it yanked away at the last minute and end up lying on the grass staring at the sky wondering how it could have happened
again.

Months of promises and assurances have come to nothing thanks to a lopsided interpretation of the risks associated with opening the border and allowing Canadian cattle to flow into the United States. Adding insult to injury was the vote in the U.S. Senate to overturn the Bush administration's plan that
set today as the day the ban would be lifted. Before the vote was taken, one junior senator had the gall to draw a parallel between the mad cow crisis in Britain and the potential for a similar situation arising in the United States if Canadian cattle were allowed into the country. The senator might have been well advised to note that something in the order of 180,500 head of cattle were infected in Britain and 148 people unfortunately succumbed to the associated illness. Meanwhile, there has not been one case of
Creutzfeldt-Jacob disease in Canada that has been linked to the country's beef supply.

And here's the great irony: Canada does a good job of tracking its cattle across the country but in the United States keeping track of where the cows come from and where they go is done on a voluntary basis. In fact, some folks suggest that the real threat to food supply safety from contaminated beef is in the United States, not Canada.

Yedlin cites one industry source as suggesting that after all the feeding, shelter and paperwork was accounted for, it was costing ranchers about 9 cents a pound for the privilege of shipping across the border.

It's worth noting that the United States has an overcapacity situation when it comes to processing beef and depends on Canadian cattle to keep a lot of folks working. But if Canada plays its cards right, by the time the Americans wake up and realize how dependent their plants were on our cattle, it will be too late: We'll need to keep all the cows on this side of the border in order to meeting the newly created processing capacity.