02/22/05 Paper work, truckers and Canadian cattle

American Rancher February 22, 2005 Canadian cattle officials point to cattle inventory numbers to show that there will not be a flood of younger Canadian cattle coming across the U.S. border if it is indeed reopened on March 7th. Jon Masswohl, Director of International Relations for the Canadian Cattlemen's Association, says there are some practical considerations that will likely limit initial movement as well. He says Canadians know some things from the USDA rule such as the required eartags and a brand, but; Masswohl: "We still don't know entirely what the rules on the age verification are going to be. We don't know about some of the paper work things. So those are things again that are new requirements that didn't exist in the past and people are going to have to figure them out. That is sort of one of the additional factors we see why there is not going to be this huge surge of animals on March 7th or 8th. It is going to take folks a little time to figure out what the rules of the game are going to be." Masswohl says another limiting factor has been the loss of experienced cattle haulers and trucking capacity. Masswohl: "A lot of them have moved into what is another pretty lucrative market in Alberta which is working in the oil and gas fields. A lot of those guys are making good money and we think it is going to take a little while to get that trucking infrastructure back up again." I'm Bob Hoff.