Canadian Cattle Rolls Into New York
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WASHINGTON – The first new shipment of Canadian cattle rolled into America yesterday, four days after a federal appeals court ended a two-year old ban originally instituted because of mad cow disease.
Thirty-five black Angus cattle crossed the border around noon at Lewiston, N.Y., near Niagara Falls, according to the shipper, Schaus Land and Cattle Company of Elmwood, Ontario. The animals were destined for a Pennsylvania slaughterhouse.
“It’s been a long wait to get cattle to cross the line again,” said company owner Wallace Schaus. “We went from 18 trucks to nine, and it was a struggle to keep nine trucks busy, but with the border open again, it won’t be hard to get 20 trucks going again.”
In Washington state, a common destination for Canadian cattle, another Canadian shipper has submitted a request to cross the border.
“We haven’t had a shipment go through yet, but we do have one in the process of being arranged. We don’t know if it will be by the end of the day,” Michael Louisell, a spokesman for the state’s Agriculture Department, said.
Last Thursday, a three-judge panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals overturned a Montana judge’s decision that had kept the border closed.
America banned Canadian cattle in May 2003 after Canada’s first case of mad cow disease.
The ban hurt the American meatpacking industry, which has laid off an estimated 8,000 workers. The industry estimates that Canada shipped 1 million head a year into America before the ban.
It also hurt Canada’s cattle industry, costing Schaus alone millions of dollars, the company’s controller, Luke Simpson, said.
“The border closing was an awful devastation,” he said. “We had many, many cattle in inventory that suddenly were not worth very much.”
Stanley Eby, president of the 90,000-member Canadian Cattlemen’s Association, called yesterday “one of my better days.”
“It’s been 26 months since we’ve been in that marketplace,” Mr. Eby said. The closure cost Canadian producers around $5.7 billion, his group said.
In America, the head of a meatpacking industry group called the shipment a victory.
It “should signal the world that the North American beef market is back open for business,” J. Patrick Boyle, president and CEO of the American Meat Institute, said.
