To lower our prices, they want to import more foreign beef, which is often unsafe and diseased and endangers the health of consumers and our domestic beef herds.
Bullshit. That's the same argument that Bush makes when saying that foreign drugs are crap and American consumers should be protected from those evil foreigners with their lower prices.
While Canada still has a BSE (Mad Cow disease) problem, NCBA and the United States Department of Agriculture has been pushing to open the Canadian border to permit the importation of live animals.
and the US doesn't have BSE? Pull the other one. The North American beef herd is so integrated that for all intents and purposes it can be treated as one. If there is BSE in Canada there is BSE in the US, and vice versa.
Let it be known that one of their mad cows went into the animal feed chain and their traceability of that feed is very questionable.
Questionable? Says who? What are their credentials? How does the US livestock tracability system exceed Canada's? Oh, wait, the US doesn't have one.
NCBA's and Lord's position against COOL is that it is now mandatory instead of optional which makes it practically useless as a means to get the country of origin labeling on imported food products.
COOL is not about tracibility. It is protectionism, pure and simple. So a calf born in Montana, raised in Montana, fed in Montana and slaughtered in Brooks, Alberta is now "Canadian". If the animal TOUCHES Canadian soil it's no longer a product of the US? That's COOL.
While Canada and Mexico can send in enormous numbers of inferior or diseased cattle across the border
Again, Bullshit. All livestock entering the US are subject to CFIA movement permits, healthy when loaded, they are subject to USDA inspection at the border and yes, USDA does turn some animals back. Slaughter cattle move under seal from the border to the plant where they are subject to the normal US ante and post mortem meat inspection regime. Boxed beef from Canada is inspected under CFIA rules, including HACCP.
Ed Lord, NCBA, the packers, and the USDA say it will be too costly to identify home-grown and feed cattle. Why? We have a brand law and brucellosis tags, shipping permits, and sales receipts for our cattle. All they have to do is keep track of the imports to weed out the unhealthy, uninspected meat that goes in the meat case at your grocer.
All of which does not add up to a workable tracibility system. Brands? Which brand? A steer may have several by the time it is slaughtered. Similar arguments work against the other paperwork cited.
And what uninspected meat is this writer talking about?