02/21/05 A Canadian on cattle numbers and border

American Rancher February 21, 2005 One fear among U.S. cattle producers about reopening the border with Canada come March 7th is that there will be a flood of cattle coming across that will depress domestic prices. Jon Masswohl, Director of International Relations for the Canadian Cattlemen's Association, says they are actually pretty current on cattle numbers. Masswohl: "And pretty comparable to where we were at this time in 2003 before BSE had occurred. If you compare our feedlot inventory numbers from January 1st of 2003 we were at 1.03 million nationally. Whereas January 1st 2005 we are at 1.02 million nationally. So we are actually slightly down from two years ago as opposed to what everybody seems to think that because we haven't been able to ship for the last year and half, that we are just stacked up." 31 Masswohl says a big reason there isn't that stack up is because slaughter capacity in Canada has increased from 72-thousand head per week in May of 2003 to about 84-thousand head a week currently. Masswohl: "And if everything announced actually gets built, we will be at 95-thousand head by the end of 2005." Where is the meat from that increased slaughter capacity going? Masswohl says Canada cut back on imports, domestic demand increased and its shipments to the U.S. of boneless beef from cattle under 30 months of age have increased significantly. Several export markets have also reopened. I'm Bob Hoff.