R-CALF announced Wednesday it has filed an additional legal challenge to the U.S. Department of Agriculture rule allowing Canadian cattle older than 30 months (OTM) to be imported into the U.S. Ten other plaintiffs joined R-CALF in asking the District Court of South Dakota to consider the latest case of bovine spongiform encephalopathy in a five-year-old cow from British Columbia when ruling on an injunction to block USDA's rule.
The rule, which took effect Nov.19, 2007, allows cattle born in Canada after March 1, 1999, to be imported into the U.S. In its new notice to the court, R-CALF pointed out that half of the BSE cases detected in Canadian-born cattle have been in cattle born after March 1, 1999. R-CALF charged that USDA's conclusion that the Canadian feed ban was effective in stopping the disease is "speculative and inconsistent with available information." The court filing pointed out that the latest BSE-infected animal "could have been imported into the U.S. before it died and was determined to have BSE," bringing the "imminent threat of substantial, irreparable injury" to the plaintiffs unless the court grants a preliminary injunction.
R-CALF told the court that recent massive street demonstration against U.S. beef in Korea could now be viewed "with the knowledge that two of the three BSE cases discovered since the challenged rule went into effect could have been imported legally into the U.S. from Canada under the challenged OTM rule before they succumbed to BSE."
Source: Feedstuffs
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