Another week, another fiasco.
That’s how it seemed to Manitoba Cattle Producers Association president Betty Green when confusion reigned last week over what Canadian beef could be shipped to the United States.
“This has gone so far beyond science,” fumed Green as she tried to find out what was happening at the U.S. border.
“Even the country that said it was going to use science is now just into political wrangling.”As the United States Department of Agriculture wrestled with how to deal with a Montana court decision that blocked the expanded import of certain kinds of Canadian beef, industry analysts got ready to rearrange all their assumptions about the beef market.
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“There is a clear set of misunderstandings in the U.S. marketplace,” said Jim Robb, a meat market analyst with the Livestock Marketing Information Centre in Lakewood, Colorado.
“This is really our first step backwards.”
To settle a dispute with Ranchers-Cattlemen Action Legal Fund, the USDA agreed to back off its April 19 expansion of beef trade and allow the formal border reopening rule making to take its course.
Robb said this recent furor shows that the U.S. and Canadian governments need to work harder to get borders open, both in North America and overseas.
“Canada should have worked more aggressively and should still be working more aggressively in helping open the Asian markets and the Mexican markets,” said Robb.
Kevin Grier of the George Morris Centre in Guelph, Ont., said Canadian politicians need to focus on meeting American requirements.
“We wasted a lot of time and effort this year accusing different parts of the industry of trying to take advantage of the other and it didn’t get us anywhere,” said Grier.
“If there was equal effort spent on working in the United States and around the world to get the borders opened, if we could have expended our energy in the United States, we would have been further ahead.”
Robb said getting imports of live cattle approved will be difficult because the USDA process is complicated and slow.
Many Canadians and Americans have been unrealistic in thinking that the border will open before the end of 2004, he said.
Canadian cattle producers need to factor trade disruptions into their future calculations, because these will continue.
“If you rely on international trade, as Canada does, you’re going to have these kinds of shocks in a commodity-based industry,” said Robb.
“We’re going to have more volatility in the future.”
