U.S-Canada Beef Trade
Agreement In Red Tape

BILLINGS, Mont. —(AP)— A U.S.-Canadian agreement to encourage two-way trade in cattle between Montana and Alberta has snagged because of red tape added to the deal in Ottawa, cattlemen say.

The rules, which have discouraged Alberta feedlots from participating, have cost the first year of the two-year pilot project. But Western Canadian cattle industry leaders say they hope the problem is solved by Sept. 1, in time for the next marketing season.

In the meantime, the delay has caused frustration, disappointment and anger on both sides of the border.

"Every day, Montana producers see truckloads of Canadian-fed cattle coming south," said Lynn Cornwell, president of the Montana Stockgrowers Association. "That is a problem. We worked on this project so we could get calves up there."

"Canada is not honoring its half of the agreement," said Jim Peterson, executive vice president of the association. "Our producers feel we got snookered."

In October, AgCanada and the U.S. Agriculture Department approved the project that resulted from a three-year effort by Montana and Canadian cattlemen to ease the movement of cattle between the two countries.

Under the agreement, the Canadian Food Inspection Service was to designate feedlots in Alberta and Saskatchewan that would be eligible to import Montana and Washington state feeder cattle without tests for anaplasmosis, blue tongue, brucellosis and tuberculosis.

On the U.S. side, USDA's Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service agreed to recognize Canada's disease-free status for brucellosis and tuberculosis, waiving the usual import testing requirement. Montana and Washington state also amended their brucellosis vaccination requirement for imported animals.

The agreement was announced Oct. 22 by Canada's Minister of Agriculture Lyle Vanclief and U.S. Agriculture Secretary Dan Glickman.

However, Alberta feedlot operators found out that under AgCanada regulations, each imported animal would require an individual identification number that followed it to the slaughterhouse. And all animals in the feedlot, regardless of origin, would have to be individually identified.

The feedlots balked; it was too costly and cumbersome.

"The rules and regulations were more onerous than they needed to be," said Larry Sears, chairman of the international trade committee of the Canadian Cattlemen's Association in Calgary. "These new regs better be in place by August so those calves can find a home in Canada next fall."

Sears agreed with Peterson that if left to the cattlemen, the problem would be solved.

"We'd have it done," said Sears. "AgCanada does not need to take this long. It will cost us lost opportunities. And there is political significance in making this work."

The agreement calls for the movement of cattle from Oct. 1 to the following March 31. This was chosen because the transmitting organism for blue tongue cannot survive the cold.

The Canadian cattle feeding industry has burgeoned in the past decade because of plentiful, inexpensive feed barley. Two new slaughtering plants have sprung up in Alberta and it is estimated Alberta's feedlot operators will have to import 250,000 feeder calves a year to fully supply the slaughter plants.

Dennis Laycraft, executive vice president of the Canadian Cattlemen's Association, said he hoped revised regulations would be implemented by Sept. 1.

"I think the Canadian cattlemen are embarrassed by this," Peterson said. "They are having a problem with their own government."