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From: TSS ()
Subject: R-CALF may launch class-action lawsuit against USDA
Date: April 13, 2005 at 6:31 am PST

R-CALF may launch class-action lawsuit

by Pete Hisey on 4/13/2005 for Meatingplace.com

Bill Bullard, chief executive of Ranchers-Cattlemen Action Legal Fund, United Stockgrowers of America, told Meatingplace.com that the organization may organize a class-action lawsuit against USDA on behalf of ranchers and smaller processors. The suit would charge that USDA wrongly deprived those ranchers and smaller processors of sales to overseas markets by refusing to allow them to test all cattle for export for bovine spongiform encephalopathy.

U.S. producers would have been able to maintain their share of the Japanese market if USDA had allowed the testing, he says.

"What was the harm in voluntary testing?" Bullard asked. "It was mutually beneficial (to the United States and Japan), but it wasn't in the big packers' interest." Bullard adds that R-CALF might ask smaller packers to join in the lawsuit.

The organization may also ask that a Senate committee look into allegations of favoritism at USDA, contending that the agency is filled with former beef industry figures who favor the interests of large ranchers and packers.

http://www.meatingplace.com/MembersOnly/webNews/details.aspx?item=14093

COMMODITIES AND FUTURES

STRICTLY PRIVATE AND CONFIDENTIAL 25, AUGUST 1995

snip...

To minimise the risk of farmers' claims for compensation from feed
compounders.

To minimise the potential damage to compound feed markets through adverse publicity.

To maximise freedom of action for feed compounders, notably by
maintaining the availability of meat and bone meal as a raw
material in animal feeds, and ensuring time is available to make any
changes which may be required.

snip...

THE FUTURE

4..........

MAFF remains under pressure in Brussels and is not skilled at
handling potentially explosive issues.

5. Tests _may_ show that ruminant feeds have been sold which
contain illegal traces of ruminant protein. More likely, a few positive
test results will turn up but proof that a particular feed mill knowingly
supplied it to a particular farm will be difficult if not impossible.

6. The threat remains real and it will be some years before feed
compounders are free of it. The longer we can avoid any direct
linkage between feed milling _practices_ and actual BSE cases,
the more likely it is that serious damage can be avoided. ...

SEE full text ;

http://www.bseinquiry.gov.uk/files/yb/1995/08/24002001.pdf

TSS

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