02/12/07 More ammo over 30 and older rule

American Rancher February 12, 007 Members of R-CALF USA are in Washington D. C. this week to lobby members of Congress and USDA. One of the items on the agenda is USDA's proposed 30 month and older rule on Canadian cattle imports. With the announcement last week by Canadian officials of another case of BSE, R-CALF Animal Health Committee chairman Max Thornsberry, says this demonstrates just how ridiculous and premature it is to even be considering further relaxations of our import standards. During a visit to the Pacific Northwest last week, R-CALF's Bill Bullard talked about the organization's plans to fight the USDA proposal. Bullard: "The first thing we are going to we are going to submit comments to USDA during the commend period that ends March 12th. These comments will be sufficient that if necessary we will take those to court and litigate this as well. We will challenge this rule. With the new Congress we are hopeful as well that Congress will intervene on this issue. In fact we have four senators who have already sent a letter indicating their displeasure with USDA's attempt to further relax our border. This makes absolutely no sense to further relax our border at a time when we are still not able to restore all of our lost export markets." And of course R-CALF is still appealing a legal challenge to the underlying rule USDA's 30 month proposal would amend. I'm Bob Hoff.