CHARLOTTETOWN, P.E.I. – An American farm leader is offering little hope that the American border will open anytime soon to Canadian beef.
And United States National Farmers Union president Dave Frederickson also predicted U.S. country-of-origin labelling will become mandatory in September 2004 despite a recent legislative setback. He said it should become law and it is not protectionist, despite Canadian howls to the contrary.
Frederickson made his controversial comments July 25 to the summer board meeting of the Canadian Federation of Agriculture. CFA president Bob Friesen called them “articulate and unapologetic.”
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The NFU president, claiming to represent 300,000 American farmers, said the border closing has been justified. “We do so only because we want to take the strongest measures to protect our domestic beef industry.”
In a later interview, Frederickson said science and scientific assurances that the one case of bovine spongiform encephalopathy was isolated and contained are not enough, no matter what trade agreements say.
The Japanese threat to cut off more than $800 million US beef imports after Sept. 1 if there is no guarantee that Canadian product is not included must be considered, said the U.S. farm leader.
“It’s a big chess game,” he said. “It’s a big market. It’s a big gamble. I’d have to look very closely at the numbers before I could make a firm statement on that.”
But he was clear that making trade decisions strictly on the basis of scientific evidence of safety is not good enough. Governments must take account of how farmers and consumers feel about the science, said Frederickson.
“I just hang it on ‘you’re never wrong about how you feel’,” he said in the interview after his CFA speech. “You can tell people a thousand times that the evidence is overwhelming, that this is not a problem, but if they feel that’s wrong, it’s going to be hard to convince them otherwise.”
On country-of-origin labelling, supposed to take effect in little more than a year, Canadian and American opponents of the measure took some comfort recently in a decision by a House of Representatives committee in Washington to block funding for implementation.
The NFU president said he is certain that vote will be overturned in the Senate and insisted the proposal is not the protectionism that its critics claim.
“It is a promotional tool. It’s a way to promote our product. Consumers may decide to buy Canadian. We’re prepared to take that competitive risk.
