CALGARY, (April 18, 2005) — It doesn’t look like the final chapter in the mad cow saga will be written anytime soon, Canadian beef industry insiders predict. In fact, they say the U.S-dependent beef industry north of the 49th will likely have to retrench if it’s going to thrive in the future.

As even the not-so-pessimistic Canadian cattle haulers predicted, the U.S.’s scheduled March 7 border opening to live cattle couldn’t hold firm last month. A federal U.S. judge sucker-punched a rule to lift the 21-month ban for live Canadian cattle, knocking down –and perhaps knocking out for good — the hopes of beef industry workers and cross-border cattle haulers anticipating an end to the two-year trade battle.

Just five days before the U.S. Department of Agriculture planned to lift the ban on live cattle younger than 30 months (about 70 percent of Canadian stock), as well as all boxed beef shipments, U.S. District Court Judge Richard Cebull granted a request by an anti-trade cattlemen’s group for a temporary injunction to keep the border closed indefinitely.

The border has been shut down to live cattle shipments since a single Alberta cow was diagnosed in May 2003 with bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE), otherwise known as mad cow disease.

The protectionist industry group, R-CALF United Stockgrowers of America, told the court that it would be “insane” to allow imports to resume so soon after two other back-to-back mad cow cases were discovered in Alberta in December 2004 and January this year. Judge Cebull agreed for the most part, granting the temporary injunction, and ordering lawyers for both sides to prepare for a trial.

The decision doesn’t surprise veteran Canadian cattle haulers, however. Many have been skeptical of the border opening process since it became clear soon after the first BSE case in 2003 that politics, not science, would dictate if and when the U.S. would again accept live Canadian cattle.

“The American [ranchers] are getting very good prices for their cattle now,” says Jim Ryan, general manager of Butte Grain Merchants, in Picture Butte, Alta. He told Today’s Trucking that because of high demand, and with no competing premium cattle from Canada crossing the border, U.S. ranchers have never seen the kind of prices they’re collecting today. “And they want to keep it that way. That’s what all that injunction business is about,” he says.

Ryan says Butte Grain Merchants — a feedlot that hauls its own product — has been luckier than most carriers. While he’s been able to hold on to 70 percent of his people since May 2003, much of the industry has seen more than a 50 percent decline, he says. That number is likely to worsen as the glut of Canadian cattle swells further in the coming months.

Keith Horsburgh, owner of Grace Cattle Haulers in Brooks, Alta., and the self-described optimist who told Today’s Trucking earlier this year that he had his doubts on the promised March 7 opening, didn’t say “I told-you-so,” but expressed disappointment with the decision. “I think everybody was kind of praying it was going to open. But unfortunately, we all knew we had yet to hear from R-CALF,” he said.

Even if the U.S. began waving in Canadian cattle tomorrow, Ryan, for one, doesn’t think carriers or drivers who left the industry will flock back. “If this all went ahead as scheduled, it would still probably take six months for guys to get comfortable again and put some capital into the industry,” he says. “Even if it opened right now, it would be more like a year just to get guys to try it again.”

With indications that the U.S. border may never again be stable in respect to Canadian cattle, and since Canada can’t eat itself out of this mess, many are starting to call for a retrenching of the industry to focus more on its own backyard. Horsburgh predicts the opening of more Canadian slaughterhouses and meat packers. “Maybe we’ll just end up sending everything down [to the U.S.] in a box,” he says.