"Ticked at R-CALF? You’re not Alone"

"Nearly 8,000 U.S. meatpacking jobs lost. Multiple factories closed for good, while others were forced to go dark for days because of insufficient cattle to process. Meat packing workers taking out second mortgages to make ends meet because their hours had been slashed. American consumers who were paying $1.85 a pound for ground beef before the border closed are paying about $2.55 today. These vignettes sum up the economic chaos south of the border that was unleashed on hard-working American families, meatpackers and cattlemen because of the unnecessary extension of a cattle ban against Canada that should have ended nearly two years ago," writes AMI President and CEO J. Patrick Boyle in a guest editorial in Alberta’s Lethbridge Herald.

Boyle notes that the prolonged ban on Canadian imports caused an “industry wide realignment in the U.S.” that has potentially placed some U.S. meatpackers at a competitive disadvantage to their Canadian counterparts. “Unfortunately for the U.S., Canadian packers with new plants, expanded capacity and a modern animal tracking system in place will give their American competitors a run for their money,” he adds.

“And what great cosmic force triggered this dramatic restructuring of an entire sector of the U.S. agricultural economy? R-CALF, a Montana-based group founded in 1998, representing a small number of disgruntled cattlemen and driven by the principle that international trade is the devil and they are here to perform an exorcism. “

“Although the list of victims of this protracted cattle ban is long, perhaps the greatest victim of the border closure is the truth,” adds Boyle. “R-CALF argued that Canadian beef is unsafe and allowing Canadian cattle into the U.S. is tantamount to poisoning our food supply. Yet, while making this outlandish argument aimed at obtaining a permanent ban on the importation of live Canadian cattle, R-CALF sat idly by for two years as the U.S. imported more than two billion pounds of boxed, boneless Canadian beef. If their rhetoric had even a scintilla of truth behind it, wouldn't the government have stepped in to address this alleged public health threat?” he asks.

“The restoration of full trade with Canada, long overdue, has been put in motion by the federal appellate court order that struck down the preliminary injunction R-CALF obtained. And although Canadian cattle are again coming into the U.S., there is one more legal episode in a Billings, Montana courtroom that might again threaten trade,” he notes. He ends by commenting that “one can only hope that our friends in Canada understand that the isolationistic rhetoric touted by a handful of militant cattlemen at R-CALF doesn’t represent mainstream American thought, and that most of us hope that if the shoe was on the other foot, Canadians might be more fair-minded about this and treat us a bit better than they were treated by R-CALF.”

To see a full copy of the article, and the cartoon, click here: http://www.meatami.com/AMIDocuments/Lth071905-A08.pdf