A federal judge’s ruling requiring more public comment on the United States Department of Agriculture’s decision to resume imports of beef from Canadian cattle 30 months of age and older will not stop trade or set a precedent.
The decision has more to do with government procedure than stopping commerce, said Dennis Laycraft, executive vice-president of the Canadian Cattlemen’s Association.
“The good news is all trade in all beef products and live cattle can carry on,” he said.
He did not think it would force changes in the way rules are written in the future.
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“It always sets some sort of precedent when you make a decision like this, but it is up to USDA to decide whether there was a precedent they don’t like,” he said.
No deadline for the public comment was given.
Meanwhile the USDA is attempting to fast track rules for country-of-origin labelling as well as formulate other rules to allow trade to resume with other BSE countries and open up to other species like sheep and goats.
“We were hoping it would all be in Rule 3 but it is not clear it is going to be,” Laycraft said.
The July 3 order addresses one of several concerns in a lawsuit filed by the Ranchers-Cattlemen Action Legal Fund (R-CALF) and other plaintiffs seeking an injunction of USDA’s minimum-risk rule released last November. That rule allowed resumption of imports of Canadian cattle born after 1999 and most beef products from older Canadian cattle.
The first rule was released in 2005 to allow the importation of cattle younger than 30 months and some beef products including meat from older animals.
The provision to import older than 30 month beef was pulled without public comment after BSE was found in a four-year-old cow from Alberta in July 2006. It was added when the second rule was published in 2007.
“When they were doing the final publication of Rule 2, they just simply lifted the suspension,” Laycraft said.
Judge Lawrence Piersol of the U.S. District Court for the Northern Division of South Dakota said the decision about the beef in Rule 1 should have been presented for comment.
“The USDA’s failure to explain why the (older) beef provisions were implemented in 2007 after its decision not to implement them in 2005 prohibits this court from concluding that a reasoned basis for the decision existed in 2007,” Piersol wrote in his July 3 decision.
The court will delay the remainder of the case until after the administrative proceeding required by the judge’s order.
In a News release
news, R-CALF praised the decision and said it will now pursue the executive, legislative and judicial branches of government to overturn the entire rule.
