08/30/06 Older Canadian cattle

Older Canadian Beef Beef trade with Canada took another turn recently. I'm Jeff Keane I'll be back in one minute to tell you about it. Just a couple of weeks ago I was getting pretty nervous. We had not marketed our dry cows as early as we had planned and there were some real signals and rumors in the air the USDA was getting ready to open our border for the importation of Canadian cattle over 30 months of age. The opening of the border for cattle less than 30 months of age caused a big increase in the supply of fat cattle in the U.S. and I knew what would happen to the price of dry cows if that supply was increased. Turns out I didn't need to worry this time since two more cases of BSE were discovered in Canada and the USDA withdrew a rule that would have let select cattle over 30 months of age into the United States. The rule got as far as being filed for cost review with the office of Management and Budget, so the rumors were right. The USDA has been working on getting these older cattle from Canada into the U.S. for quite some time and have made statements to the effect that keeping our border closed to these cattle is depriving the United States slaughter industry of a valuable commodity and causing a backup of cull cattle in Canada. Lets see; opening the border to older Canadian cattle would help the U.S. beef packers and Canadian cattlemen. Would it help U.S. cattlemen market their non-producing cows? I don't think so. I'm Jeff Keane. Capital Press 8/4/06 Western Livestock Reporter 8/2/06