05/31/05 Packers launch Can border website

American Rancher May 31, 2005 The American Meat Institute has launched a new web site, openbeefborders dot com, in an effort to communicate the devastating and long term impacts it says will result if full cattle and beef trade with Canada is not restored quickly. Patrick Boyle is president of the American Meat Institute, which is a trade organization for the meat packing industry. Boyle: "We hope that openbeefborders.com will be a resource for the news media, for policy makers, for the very people who advocate maintaining a closed border. We also hope the website will make clear a fundamental fact, R-CALF does not represent the views of the U.S. beef industry. Sadly, thanks to a sympathetic judge, we are experiencing the tyranny of a minority. AMI, mainstream cattle groups, scientists, the U.S. government itself, all embrace the majority view that U.S. and Canadian beef are safe, our herds are healthy, and full trade should be restored." The American Meat Institute is one of several organizations that submitted a friend of the court brief in support of the USDA's appeal of the preliminary injunction against the USDA rule that would reopen the border to Canadian live cattle. Meanwhile back in federal District Court, R-CALF USA recently filed a motion for summary judgement in its lawsuit over the Canadian border rule and also asked the court to halt all imports of Canadian boxed beef. I'm Bob Hoff.