Cattle industry leaders respond to trade questions

By JULIET BRISKIN | Staff writer

August 26, 2004 - This is the second part in a series of two regarding topics addressed during the NCBA summer meeting, televised Aug. 11.

In its ongoing effort to provide consumers and members of the U.S. cattle industry with the latest industry and public policy news, the National Cattlemen's Beef Association (NCBA) hosted a 90-minute televised town hall meeting on Aug. 11 in conjunction with their 2004 Summer Conference. The second half of the live broadcast featured Terry Stokes, NCBA chief executive officer, Jan Lyons, NCBA president, Jim McAdams, NCBA president-elect, and Mike John, NCBA vice president.

The four NCBA officers fielded questions from audience members and from across the United States via telephone on a myriad of issues including international trade, genetic engineering and reproductive cloning, and the national animal identification program.

"Why has Japan shut down imports from the United States and why hasn't there been any pressure applied to their exports to us?" asked one audience member.

In response, Stokes explained that "we continue to negotiate between our two governments as to how we resume trade with Japan. Certainly we want to use the appropriate channels and I think that is the approach being taken today.

"And, if we come up on some sort of stall tactic or if there is resistance (from Japan) to resuming trade with Japan, there are avenues through the World Trade Organization that can be pursued. We have seen positive signs in working with Japan and feel like that a lot of progress has been made and we will see trade resume in the near future."

Continuing on the topic of international trade, another audience member asked the panel to elaborate on how the United States is negotiating the resumption trade with the foreign markets that closed down following the December 2003 BSE case.

"Currently, as we look at resuming trade related to the BSE incident, our government is negotiating on a country-by-country basis," said Stokes. "If we look at what happened on Dec. 24, we see that trade with our international partners stopped. That was primarily a result of the fact that every time that this (BSE) has happened in other countries we did the same thing.

"What we would like to see is the international community come together, using the World Health Organization guidelines, and establish a science-based protocol that deals with how to resume trade. This would take the decision making process out of the political arena and keep it in the science-based arena."

The discussion then turned to genetic engineering and reproductive cloning when an audience member asked if the NCBA has a policy concerning the introduction into the food supply of beef produced or modified with those technologies.

"At the present time we do not have any policy on the books regarding that," answered Lyons. "Certainly if policy were to be made regarding that, we would expect that it would be very reasoned and that it would be based on science."

When asked what policy issues are currently looming farther off in the distance, as compared to BSE and international trade, and may become top priority for the industry over the next few years, John quickly responded.

"I have done a lot of work with and have been very involved with the animal i.d. issue," asserted John. "This is not an issue that we are going to solve tomorrow or next week or next month or even in a year or two. The industry has been working on this for over two-and-a-half years with 70 organizations and 400 people involved and I think it has a lot of philosophical ramifications for the industry.

"We have to make sure that on an issue like animal i.d. that we stick to our guns and we stick to our philosophies on minimizing government involvement and on protecting our privacy," the NCBA vice president continued. "We have to make sure that we are going down a road that is only for the stated purpose that we have been working on, and that is animal disease control. This issue is definitely going to take some time and is out there in the future."