Sheep Industry Petition Important to Cattle Industry

R-CALF United Stock Growers of America's asking for a global safeguard investigation to be conducted by the US International Trade Commission into the sheep industry, as 62% of the sheep inventory has been wiped out. The number of producers are decreasing in the country and imports are skyrocketing. Why is R-Calf USA working on a sheep issue? Bill Bullard, CEO says it's because where the sheep industry goes, the cattle industry follows. And this outsourcing of sheep could happen to the cattle industry. Among the remedies is the use of Section 201 global safeguards.

"And what that says is if imports are a substantial cause injury to a domestic industry, then you could seek protections in the form of tariffs or tariff rate quotas. And that's exactly what we're seeking the sufficient and what a tariff rate quota is, is it provides a foreign country or countries a certain level that they could import products into the United States with a minimal tariff."

Bullard says it imports over the quota level and then come in at a higher rate.

"But once they hit the volume threshold of the tariff rate quota, then any imports that come in over that quota level would be at a very high rate."

The higher quota level would provide the US sheep industry the chance to rebuild and therefore be profitable again, according to Bullard.

He says they are in hopes that a trade investigation will be initiated by the US Trade Representative's office by the first of the year.