LAST WORD
We all have our R-CALFs
By Dave Wreford
Country Guide magazine
Inward-looking. Short-sighted. Selfish. Irrational. Exploitative. Cynical. Deceptive. Dishonest. Wonky. Off-the-wall. Losers.
The English language itself, with all its descriptive power, is inadequate to describe that weird lobby organization known as the Ranchers-Cattlemen's Legal Action Fund R-CALF for short.
More than any other, this U.S. producer group is responsible for the prolonged crisis limiting access by "Canadian beef and live cattle to the U.S. market. R-Calf has used every phony argument in the book to prevent full reopening of the border. By now, there probably isn't a single cattle producer in Canada who would disagree with the commentator who suggested "R-BARF" as a more appropriate name for the organization.
The facts of the situation are simple. The BSE (mad cow) status of the U.S. and Canadian cattle herds is identical. One infected animal has been found on each side of the border. Others may exist but, if they do, the numbers are too small to worry about. The risk to human health is negligible. And with current restrictions on use of animal by-products in feed, the health risk to livestock is also effectively zero. If R-CALF is really worried about health issues connected with eating meat, it should focus on E. coli contamination -itself overblown in the public mind but nevertheless a far more significant hazard than BSE.
None of this, however, has stopped R-CALF's determined campaign to delay, delay and delay full resumption of cross-border trade in beef and cattle. The group's success has certainly raised cattle values (which at this point in the cycle would be high anyway) in the hands of U.S. producers. But at the same time normal trade patterns in what was a continental market have been disrupted to the cost not only of Canadian cattle producers and processors but also U.S. processors and consumers. As well, consumer confidence in the safety of meat is being undermined. Perhaps worst of all, the situation is creating precedents that set the stage for more BSE-style trade disruptions in which narrow interests exploit animal health of plant disease incidents to the detriment of U.S. farmers and consumers generally as well as their Canadian neighbors.
To anyone whose view extends even slightly beyond the immediate short term, R-CALF's position is ludicrous. But the fact is, as an economist once famously said, in the long term we're all dead. R-CALF's tune plays well to the boys in the bar at Great Falls, Montana. Likewise, it's favorably received by local politicians and on down the line to Washington.
Before we in Canada get too overcome with indignation at this display of short-sighted greed, however, we should pause for a moment. R-CALF's position looks different according to which side of the border you're sitting on, and whether or not you're raising cattle. There are parallels in Canada, and a good example to start with is dairy supply management.
To us in Canada, dairy supply management makes a lot of sense: It guarantees efficient domestic milk producers a high and stable income. Because production is controlled and imports virtually prohibited, taxpayers don't pay any direct subsidy to dairy producers. It's a tidy little arrangement.
An American dairy farmer looking north sees a somewhat different picture. He sees a market totally closed to his product even if he can produce it more cheaply. He sees a producer lobby so powerful that the Canadian government jumps to that lobby's every command. He sees consumers overcharged for imported specialty cheeses - if they're available at all. He sees a monopoly justifying its existence with numbers bearing little relationship to reality. He sees an industry prepared to fight to the end (in the face of clear policies set up by trade agreements and tribunals) to export heavily subsidized dairy surpluses or ban imports of processed product like butter oil blends. He sees obstruction everywhere he looks. In other words, he sees something that looks a lot like R-CALF.
It's a similar story with the Canadian Wheat Board (CWB). Many grain growers on this side of the border like the concept of single-desk selling and see it as beneficial to them and harmless to everyone else. American wheat producers, however; see a gigantic government-backed monopoly. What to Canadians is a simple $80 million payment to cover a pool deficit comes across to Americans as an $80 million export subsidy. And don't even talk about the CWB's lack of co-operation in a project by prairie durum growers to team up with their North Dakota counterparts in a pasta venture. To Americans that's an example of bureaucracy gone completely mad.
This is not a pitch to terminate supply management and the Canadian Wheat Board. That's not about to hap- pen. And if it did, it wouldn't help the current border situation for beef and cattle. But looking at supply management and the CWB from an American viewpoint does help explain the apparent unreasonable and impossible obstinacy of R -CALF. .It also underscores the size of the challenge facing the new federal ag minister and his colleagues if they are as committed as they claim to U .S./Canada free trade in farm commodities
We all have our R-CALFs
By Dave Wreford
Country Guide magazine
Inward-looking. Short-sighted. Selfish. Irrational. Exploitative. Cynical. Deceptive. Dishonest. Wonky. Off-the-wall. Losers.
The English language itself, with all its descriptive power, is inadequate to describe that weird lobby organization known as the Ranchers-Cattlemen's Legal Action Fund R-CALF for short.
More than any other, this U.S. producer group is responsible for the prolonged crisis limiting access by "Canadian beef and live cattle to the U.S. market. R-Calf has used every phony argument in the book to prevent full reopening of the border. By now, there probably isn't a single cattle producer in Canada who would disagree with the commentator who suggested "R-BARF" as a more appropriate name for the organization.
The facts of the situation are simple. The BSE (mad cow) status of the U.S. and Canadian cattle herds is identical. One infected animal has been found on each side of the border. Others may exist but, if they do, the numbers are too small to worry about. The risk to human health is negligible. And with current restrictions on use of animal by-products in feed, the health risk to livestock is also effectively zero. If R-CALF is really worried about health issues connected with eating meat, it should focus on E. coli contamination -itself overblown in the public mind but nevertheless a far more significant hazard than BSE.
None of this, however, has stopped R-CALF's determined campaign to delay, delay and delay full resumption of cross-border trade in beef and cattle. The group's success has certainly raised cattle values (which at this point in the cycle would be high anyway) in the hands of U.S. producers. But at the same time normal trade patterns in what was a continental market have been disrupted to the cost not only of Canadian cattle producers and processors but also U.S. processors and consumers. As well, consumer confidence in the safety of meat is being undermined. Perhaps worst of all, the situation is creating precedents that set the stage for more BSE-style trade disruptions in which narrow interests exploit animal health of plant disease incidents to the detriment of U.S. farmers and consumers generally as well as their Canadian neighbors.
To anyone whose view extends even slightly beyond the immediate short term, R-CALF's position is ludicrous. But the fact is, as an economist once famously said, in the long term we're all dead. R-CALF's tune plays well to the boys in the bar at Great Falls, Montana. Likewise, it's favorably received by local politicians and on down the line to Washington.
Before we in Canada get too overcome with indignation at this display of short-sighted greed, however, we should pause for a moment. R-CALF's position looks different according to which side of the border you're sitting on, and whether or not you're raising cattle. There are parallels in Canada, and a good example to start with is dairy supply management.
To us in Canada, dairy supply management makes a lot of sense: It guarantees efficient domestic milk producers a high and stable income. Because production is controlled and imports virtually prohibited, taxpayers don't pay any direct subsidy to dairy producers. It's a tidy little arrangement.
An American dairy farmer looking north sees a somewhat different picture. He sees a market totally closed to his product even if he can produce it more cheaply. He sees a producer lobby so powerful that the Canadian government jumps to that lobby's every command. He sees consumers overcharged for imported specialty cheeses - if they're available at all. He sees a monopoly justifying its existence with numbers bearing little relationship to reality. He sees an industry prepared to fight to the end (in the face of clear policies set up by trade agreements and tribunals) to export heavily subsidized dairy surpluses or ban imports of processed product like butter oil blends. He sees obstruction everywhere he looks. In other words, he sees something that looks a lot like R-CALF.
It's a similar story with the Canadian Wheat Board (CWB). Many grain growers on this side of the border like the concept of single-desk selling and see it as beneficial to them and harmless to everyone else. American wheat producers, however; see a gigantic government-backed monopoly. What to Canadians is a simple $80 million payment to cover a pool deficit comes across to Americans as an $80 million export subsidy. And don't even talk about the CWB's lack of co-operation in a project by prairie durum growers to team up with their North Dakota counterparts in a pasta venture. To Americans that's an example of bureaucracy gone completely mad.
This is not a pitch to terminate supply management and the Canadian Wheat Board. That's not about to hap- pen. And if it did, it wouldn't help the current border situation for beef and cattle. But looking at supply management and the CWB from an American viewpoint does help explain the apparent unreasonable and impossible obstinacy of R -CALF. .It also underscores the size of the challenge facing the new federal ag minister and his colleagues if they are as committed as they claim to U .S./Canada free trade in farm commodities
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