CCA has mixed response to FPT Ministers' meeting

    CALGARY, July 13 /CNW/ - The Canadian Cattlemen's Association (CCA) has a
mixed response to the federal, provincial and territorial (FPT) Ministers of
Agriculture meeting of last week.
    The CCA is pleased to see full support of the Agricultural Market Access
Secretariat, pushing the World Trade Organization case against South Korea and
the $20 million investment into the new Livestock Traceability Initiative. We
also appreciate the Ministers' willingness to conduct a thorough exploration
into price insurance options for cattle producers. This is an issue the CCA
has been working hard on over the past months. We asked the federal and
provincial governments to commit resources to evaluate opportunities to
provide insurance for cattle producers similar to the crop insurance grain
producers can access.
    Unfortunately, several important issues did not progress further.
    Firstly, we had hoped that the FPT meeting would result in a firm
commitment to improving the disaster programming. We believe a three pronged
approach needs to be implemented when natural disasters occur - immediate cash
assistance for producers to buy feed or move cattle to areas where feed is
available; tax deferral for producers that sell their cattle due to these
disasters, but plan to replace them in the future, and assistance to
rehabilitate their forages after the disaster has ended. The Federal
Government and the Province of Manitoba followed just such an approach to deal
with the disastrous weather that occurred last summer. The CCA congratulates
the Federal and Manitoba governments for that response and encourages adoption
of that approach as a national disaster recovery program.
    Secondly, we are disappointed that while the industry has been
continuously calling for improvements to the current suite of Business Risk
Management (BRM) programs, the FPT meeting resulted in no measurable
improvements. "We absolutely appreciate the government's recognition that the
BRM programs are not working and volunteering to review them," explains Brad
Wildeman, CCA President. "However, we had hoped that by now they would've
adopted some of the recommendations put forth by the CCA in the fall of 2007.
    Finally, it was particularly disappointing that the only firm deliverable
out of the meeting was a deadline of mandatory traceability throughout Canada
by 2011. "This announcement disregards the principles established by producers
for tracing cattle," says Wildeman. "Canada's beef and cattle industry is
already burdened with many additional costly regulations due to BSE and we
have not experienced positive return for doing so. There are significant
obstacles to overcome before we implement a verifiable, efficient and cost
effective national program for traceability. If the governments truly want to
assist industry, they should focus on helping us overcome these barriers
rather than heaping more regulations on our industry." Canada's beef and
cattle industry was the first to adopt national animal identification and to
develop a comprehensive national traceability system - but insists that the
system be designed in an efficient and cost effective manner.
    "Also important to keep in mind is that the requirements should not
exceed the current technological capabilities. It is difficult to see how the
technology we envision as being needed will emerge in the two years agreed to
at the Ministerial meeting," notes Wildeman. "There may be a time when the
industry would collectively agree to mandatory measures, but it sure isn't
now. We need more announcements of support to the industry and less on
implementing more regulations."

For further information: Ryder Lee, Manager of Federal Provincial
Relations, [phone] or [e-mail]