Courtesy Photo/Image Foot and Mouth virus coating

A bill to require Argentina to eliminate foot and mouth disease before shipping cattle to the U.S. is headed toward the floor of the U.S. Senate.

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Since January 2007, the U.S. Department of Agriculture has proposed to allow Argentine beef into the U.S., even though Argentina is not considered free of foot-and-mouth disease, as most world trading partners are.

At the same time, the USDA has been promoting an animal identification program, requiring all U.S. livestock to be identified, so an outbreak of FMD in the U.S. could be quickly contained.

Foot and mouth disease is eliminated in the United States. North America, Australia and Japan have been free of FMD for years. Argentina had an outbreak in 2006.

Foot-and-mouth disease involves no health risk for human beings. The virus affects the mouth, snout, hooves and other parts of cloven-hoof animals such as beef cattle, sheep, goats, hogs, wild boar, deer, llamas and vicunas. The animals experience problems walking because the disease eventually reaches their hooves. When it is impossible for them to access food and water, they die of starvation.

NCBA prefers trade

Cattle advocates are divided on accepting Argentine cattle into the U.S.

Independent ranchers want safeguards, but he National Cattlemen’s Beef Association, which includes beef trading companies, wants to open the border despite the danger.

NCBA admits that further opening of the beef trade with Argentina “will put our industry at risk to FMD, the one disease feared most by cattle producers,” NCBA said in a general letter to Congress. “However, this amendment is precedent setting when it comes to trade.”

If the U.S. demands Argentina to be free of the disease, the NCBA said other nations might require stricter requirements of U.S. cattle and beef.

The Ranchers-Cattlemen Action Legal Fund said opening the border to Argentine beef would almost certainly allow FMD into the U.S.

“It is time to restore the United States’ reputation of producing the most wholesome and safest beef in the world…which means we must strengthen our import standards, not weaken them,” R-CALF chief executive Bill Bullard said. “If FMD were to hit the U.S. cattle industry, you can rest assured our trading partners would seek their beef supplies somewhere else.”