10/10/08 Exports lost due to BSE cost billions

Washington Ag October 10, 2008 U.S. ranchers and beef processors lost nearly 11-billion dollars as a result of major importers banning U.S. beef in the three years following the discovery of BSE in a Washington cow imported from Canada. Those numbers are from a U.S. International Trade Commission report released this week. Gregg Doud, Chief Economist for the National Cattlemen's Beef Association says that report indicates that Japan and South Korea were responsible for 9.4 billion of the 11 billion dollar total. Doud says that's lost income producers will never get back. Doud: "To put that into some context, for those four years the entire sale of cattle and calves at the farm gate was 195.5 billion dollars for those four years. So if you took 11 into 195.5 that is a 5.6% decline in income because of lost export markets." The ITC report noted that BSE-related trade restrictions on U.S. beef are not based on science. In addition to the sales lost due to BSE the ITC estimated that tariffs and tariff-rate quota restrictions cost the beef industry another 6.3 billion dollars from 2004 to 2007. I'm Bob Hoff.