12/23/05 The cows that saved Christmas

It was two years ago today that U.S.D.A. made a stunning announcement that continues to reverberate through U.S. agriculture to this day. A downer cow that originated from Alberta, Canada and was raised and slaughtered in Washington State was diagnosed to have Mad Cow Disease. That deceased animal received the dubious tag of "the cow that stole Christmas", as foreign market after foreign market closed its borders to U.S. beef. Slowly but surely some markets have reopened. But the biggest news came December 12th, when after a long and somewhat tedious bureaucratic process, Japan announced it would resume exports of U.S. beef from cattle twenty months of age or younger. And just days after that, U.S.D.A. Chief Economist Keith Collins made this announcement. COLLINS: Our first shipment of U.S. beef landed in Japan on December 16th. So nearly two years after the market was closed, the market is now reopen. And the reaction has been exciting so far on both sides of the Pacific. Naturally, American beef producers, and connected industries, have been celebrating. COLLINS: And so the opening of that market is certainly good news for our cattle producers as well as our feed and oilseed producers that provide the energy and protein feeds that go into the beef that we sell overseas. If you look out the February fed cattle futures contract, it has been running in the neighborhood of ninety-four, ninety-five dollars a hundredweight which are very strong prices historically. And on Monday, a popular Japanese bar-be-que chain offered U.S. beef for the first time in two years while U.S. beef producers held a private banquet in Japan to usher the return of our beef in what was our largest beef export market prior to the b.s.e. incident. That initial shipment of U.S. beef was four and a half tons. So how soon and how fast will the amount of shipments increase? Martin O Connor of U.S.D.A.'s Ag Marketing Service, the agency that overseas the U.S. beef export verification program, says a Japanese team recently visited U.S. packing plants to verify they are complying with new rules for beef export to Japan. O'CONNOR: They are having a meeting the day after Christmas to discuss with their ministers the findings that they had through these trips through the mid part of the United States so we expect feedback very soon, but we really don't anticipate what their results will be until they get back and have a chance to discuss it.