The U.S.-Mexico border is shut down to horned cattle, and this has the leaders of the roping community crying foul. We tell you why.
On June 17, the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service sent out a memo stating in part, “Effective Monday June 20, 2011 and continuing until further notice, bovines from Chihuahua, Mexico that are designated as, or believed to be rodeo animals are prohibited entry to the United States and will be refused entry by Veterinarian Services at any port. This category includes any bovines with discernable horns, and animals belonging to the Corriente and other popular rodeo breeds.”
This has the leaders in the roping community crying foul because it will dramatically alter the economics of the roping industry since the cheapest—and in many opinions, best—roping cattle come from south of the border. And perhaps more significantly, these industry leaders feel the horned cattle are being singled out as a scapegoat for the Mexican-originated bovine tuberculosis problem.
About 85% of the 16,000 roping cattle imported come from the state of Chihuahua. (About 1 million feeder steers cross the border each year.) And this ruling came down after the discovery of one roping steer in Arizona infected with bovine TB. However, Lindsay Cole, Public Affairs Specialist for APHIS said that there are eight confirmed cases and four pending cases of Mexican-originated TB in feeder cattle. The problem is that the feeder cattle are still allowed to cross from Chihuahua with inspection from USDA-approved veterinarians. Horned cattle are not.
“It’s political rhetoric and these Corrientes are an easy scapegoat,” said Kirk Bray, president of the United States Team Roping Championships. “They’re accepting feeder cattle as long as they’ve been TB tested by a Mexican vet on an USDA-approved list. But if Corrientes are tested by that same vet, they won’t let them cross.”
In addition to cutting off the flow of horned cattle, the USDA will downgrade the state of Chihuahua from Modified Accredited to Accredited Preparatory as of August 18, 2011. Effective that date, the testing standards will change for all bovines coming from Mexico into the U.S. In the meantime, the beef producers in Mexico are sending cattle across the border as fast as possible before the standards change.
“The USDA is shoving beef cattle across the border as fast as you can imagine,” said Matt Sanchez, who imports about 75% of the roping cattle from Chihuahua to the major U.S. roping associations. “But to ‘address the TB issue,’ they’ve stopped crossing horned cattle. It’s politically driven and the beef industry is a big industry.”
“APHIS is under severe political pressure from dairy groups and state health officials to take some type of token action concerning the Mexican TB,” said Denny Gentry, owner and founder of the World Series of Team Roping.
http://www.equisearch.com/news/bovine-tuberculosis-shuts-down-the-mexican-u-s-border-to-horned-cattle/
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