American Meat Institute responds to 'politically motivated rhetoric' by Eric Hanson on 5/24/04 for Meatingplace.com

"Consumers should be given the facts by our elected officials, not political rhetoric."

That was just one line from a statement issued Friday by American Meat Institute President J. Patrick Boyle, in response to reports that the Agriculture Department allowed U.S. meatpackers to import ground beef and other processed beef from Canada last September.

"Given our integrated, North American industry, attacks on Canadian products are also attacks on U.S. products," Boyle in the written statement. "Questions have been raised about whether certain products should have been allowed in from Canada under permit. These are procedural questions, not food safety issues. Although it may be legitimate to examine whether appropriate procedures were followed, it is disingenuous to suggest that there is need for public concern."

Boyle went on to explain that much of the "politically motivated rhetoric" regarding bovive spongiform encephalopathy is simply political posturing and not based on good science.

"Canada's beef production practices and the regulations governing it mirror those of the U.S.," said Boyle. "American lawmakers who claim that Canadian-produced beef is unsafe ignore the science of beef safety for their own political gain. International BSE experts have confirmed that both U.S. and Canadian beef are safe, and the risk of a BSE epidemic in North America is near zero.

"The facts about BSE and beef safety reveal these protectionist lawmakers' true intentions: keeping imported products out of the U.S."

Boyle also addressed the issue of country-of-origin-labeling, which resurfaced when South Dakota's Democratic Senators Tom Daschle and Tim Johnson introduced legislation to implement country-of-origin labeling by the original Sept. 30 deadline.

"It is indeed ironic that their dubious logic becomes incomprehensible when suggesting that country-of-origin labels are imperative," Boyle said in the statement. "These labels would apply only to single-ingredient beef sold at retail. Why should only a third of beef consumed in the U.S. carry the label?

"Canada is the only major trading partner that did not cease all imports of U.S. beef after our first case of BSE. As the Golden Rule says, 'do unto others as you would have done unto you,'" Boyle said.