By Marcy Nicholson
WINNIPEG, Manitoba (Reuters) - The cattle industry continues to push the United States to reopen its border to the import of Canadian animals over 30 months old, the Canadian Cattlemen's Association president said on Thursday.
"The U.S. has always been the volume market for the cull animals. We can process them here in Canada but we don't have the full competitive bidding that we see with the open border and that's where we want to get to," Stan Eby said.
"We're actively lobbying government to get this accomplished," he said.
The United States reopened its border to Canadian cattle under 30 months old in July 2005 after banning the animals in 2003 in response to Canada's first native-born case of bovine spongiform encephalopathy, also called BSE, or mad cow disease.
Washington kept the trade ban on older cattle, however, as it considered them to be more likely to have BSE.
Eby said the discovery of more cattle with BSE in both Canada and the United States since 2003 appears to have set back progress on a full reopening of the border.
The brain-wasting disease is believed to be spread by contaminated feed. In 1997, both countries banned cattle feed containing protein from cows and other ruminant animals such as sheep and goats.
In 2002, the last year of normal trade before the mad cow crisis, the United States imported 1.7 million head from Canada. That is more than half of the 2.5 million head it imported in total that year, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Web site.
"There are good prospects that in 2006, the U.S. will propose a rule to open the border to Canadian cattle and beef over 30 months, effectively bringing the market back to its free, transparent and competitive position," said Alexander Moens of the Fraser Institute, a Canadian think-tank.
Moens released a mad cow case study in U.S.-Canada relations on Thursday, and advised Canada to work toward strengthening the North American Free Trade Agreement working relationship to protect access to the U.S. market.
USDA Secretary Mike Johanns has committed to establishing a second rule that will permit beef and cattle over 30 months to once again cross the U.S. border, said Chris Leggett, Agriculture Canada's deputy director of Canada-U.S. trade issues.
Leggett said it's a matter of "when" the second rule will be published and finally normalize trade between the two countries, rather than "if." This process has been a priority for Agri-Food and Agriculture Canada.
The Canadian government expects the specifics of the second rule will be published this year but could not speculate on when it will go into effect.
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