08/08/05 Canadian cattle imports

American Rancher August 8, 2005 Since shipments of Canadian live cattle under 30 months of age resumed to the U.S. as of July 18th, the USDA's Agricultural Marketing Service says that through last Thursday 20, 659 head have come into the U.S. Just over 11-thousand have been slaughter cattle and about 95-hundred feeder cattle. It was a U.S. appellate court's ruling throwing out a preliminary injunction against a USDA rule that's allowed the Canadian cattle to be imported. But still undecided is if and when a trial will go forward in R-CALF USA's lawsuit seeking to permanently prevent Canadian cattle imports. A trial that was scheduled to begin in Montana July 27th was postponed because the judge needed to study the appellate court's opinion on the preliminary injunction. Bill Bullard of R-CALF says they fully intend to move forward in court. Bullard: "Again all the facts have not been established on the permanent injunction issue. And the issue of the preliminary injunction that the 9th Circuit reversed, that was an action that R-CALF brought about by its own fruition. We sought the preliminary injunction so that we could prevent implementation of the rule until all the facts were decided. And again, that is a procedural matter that is ancillary to our litigation and the litigation is a challenge to the entire USDA rule." I'm Bob Hoff.