Mad cow scare traps U.S. calves in Canada

Cows do that, cattle rancher Howard Asmussen explained, when calves first are separated from their mothers and placed in separate pens on the ranch. They bellow back and forth -- endless baritone complaints -- as if the world is ending.


		Gilbert W. Arias / P-I
	With his horse Lucky, rancher Howard Asmussen works some calves on his ranch in Loomis. He’s looking to the calves to help save his ranch after selling his herd at a loss this year because of the mad cow scare in Canada.

For first time in a lifetime of running cattle, Asmussen, 70, knows the feeling.

Whipsawed between international borders, trade policy, lousy timing and age, the man who built one of the largest cattle outfits in the Northeast Cascades is facing his toughest, and perhaps his last, winter as a rancher.

The threat isn't harsh weather, sick cows, roller-coaster markets or predatory mountain lions.

One month ago, Asmussen effectively lost an entire herd of healthy prime yearlings, $1 million worth, to a disease that terrifies an industry even as it sounds like a Saturday morning children's cartoon: mad cow.

And he did so without a single infected animal.

His situation has governments, ranchers and politicians in two countries offering sympathy but little else.

It has Canadian feedlots suffering as they lose American business. It has the U.S. Department of Agriculture rewriting its rules, and it has left Asmussen with fading faith in a job and country he loves.

"The fact is I got screwed, and everyone said their hands were tied," he said while sitting in his ranch house office in the rugged, remote Sinlahekin Valley, 15 miles south of the Canadian border. "You try to do everything right and look what happens."

According to interviews with Asmussen, cattle industry representatives, politicians and health officials, what happened is this:

In January and February, Asmussen, as he's done for the past 10 years, moved 1,100 head of 11-month-old Black Angus calves 15 miles across the border to a feedlot for finishing. Finishing is a final stage of fattening before cattle taken from the range are sold for butchering.

After four months of finishing, Bill Freding, owner of the Southern Plus feedlot in Osoyoos, B.C., called Asmussen to tell his longtime friend the cattle were ready to come home for sale. He'd heard that a day earlier, May 20, U.S. officials had announced a ban on Canadian cattle after a cow in Alberta tested positive for mad cow disease.

Asmussen was excited about the sale. Prices were good and his cattle had graded high, meaning they would get a top price and keep the ranch finances well ahead of the bills. Well past retirement for most professions, he had hoped for a good score this year so he could start easing out of the business.

On the lot Freding wasn't too worried, since these were American cattle, fed American feed. The bulk of the herds on his 7,000-head lot were from American ranchers across the border.

But when Freding called U.S. officials to move the cattle back to the States, he received a shock.


		Gilbert W. Arias / P-I
	Rancher Howard Asmussen grabs a blanket before saddling his horse. He’s saddled with debt at a time he had planned to ease out of the business.

"They said the border was closed," he recalled.

"They said the ban affected all cattle in Canada regardless of origin."

He called Asmussen. "We've got a problem."

Everything changed

Cattle ranching picked Asmussen as much as he picked it. His dad had started with a few milk cows on a family farm in Douglas County. Asmussen, like all farm boys and girls, was part of the day labor. By high school, the young man, now better than 6-foot-2 and 190 pounds, aspired to more. When Texas A&M called with a football scholarship in 1950, he was ready to kiss his hometown of Mansfield goodbye.

Shortly after the scholarship offer, his father and brother died in a light plane crash near Moses Lake in a winter storm.

"So I stayed home to run the ranch," he said. "That was the end of that."

At a local dance a year later, he met a telephone operator and rodeo queen named Marilyn.

Working as much as he did, he courted her by calling late when he knew she was on duty. She'd talk to him between patching through other calls. They married 50 years ago this November.

Through those years they raised a family and built a thriving ranch. Known as a progressive rancher, he embraced grazing plans that moved the cattle regularly to reduce environmental damage. He invested tens of thousands of dollars in electronic tagging so he could track his cattle and their entire genetic history.

In other words, as he and others put it, he always did the right thing.

The two months that followed Freding's May 21 phone call was a period of "great turmoil," he said. Because of the ban, U.S. cattle prices soared. Canadian prices plummeted. At $1.07 Canadian a pound for finished, high-grade cattle in early May, the price dropped to 35 cents by June. The break-even price is 74 cents Canadian for a rancher.

As Asmussen's friends sold for good profit, his cattle were held hostage a few miles north of the border.

He called USDA officials in Oroville, then Olympia, then Washington, D.C. His meticulous record keeping showed where the cattle were at all times, what they ate. He called Republican Rep. George Nethercutt's office. Then Republican Rep. Jennifer Dunn's. He called Canadian officials.

He called them so many times he pinned their numbers to his office wall. All, he said, initially promised help. All eventually couldn't deliver. The cattle couldn't move.

Or could they?

At the same time this was happening, Hawaii-based Parker Ranch had 3,700 head sitting in Vancouver, B.C., waiting to be shipped into the United States. Parker, one of the largest cattle operations in the West, received a waiver from the USDA and was allowed to move its cattle into Washington state, USDA records show.

Bruce Wilcox, Parker's Vancouver-based agent, said Parker's situation was different. "We kept the cattle under quarantine," he said. "There were no other cattle near them. When mad cow broke loose, I contacted the USDA and we met all of the criteria."

Asmussen counters that his herd was in the same situation. "They were on a lot with American cattle, fed American grain and had spent most of their existence on American soil," he said, his voice growing tense. "They were American cattle."

The U.S. government didn't see it that way. Three weeks ago, he sold the herd in Canada at 22 cents a pound in U.S. dollars. He lost his entire investment and the losses put his ranch on the brink.

Jack Silzel, an aide to Nethercutt, said Nethercutt's office did everything it could to help. While the USDA has agreed to rewrite some of its rules on beef imports, the agency wouldn't provide relief to Asmussen.

"The real sad thing is this: Howard runs a state-of the-art ranch, exactly the model that the USDA wants its ranchers to do. He is a meticulous bookkeeper. Why penalize a man who is doing things right?"

Asmussen agrees. He said he's going to talk to his bank about his debt. He hopes by next summer his new calves will fetch a price that can start a climb back financially. Up in Osoyoos, Freding is doing the same thing, refinancing everything.

Canadian ranchers and feedlot owners who suffered when prices dropped recently received heavy subsidies from the government to make up for their losses. And American ranchers who kept their cattle in the States profited from higher prices.

And then there's Asmussen, caught in the middle of nowhere.

"Oh hell, it's bad," he said. "It's the worst thing that's ever happened to my ranch."

His voice trails off. Fall is in the air. There are cattle to wean and winter pastures to fence. Winter doesn't usually bring so much dread. He heads outside.

"It's pretty tough to work all of your life and have it jerked away from you like this in your last years."

MAD COW DISEASE

Mad cow disease, or bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE), is spread by high-protein corn feed (now banned in the United States and Canada) that is made in part from slaughtered cows. The disease is deadly to cattle and can kill humans if they eat infected beef.

In the 1980s in Great Britain, approximately 130 people died from eating BSE-infected beef. Since 1989, the United States has banned imports from countries that show evidence of mad cow disease, called that because infected cows stagger around before dying.

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