Unintended Consequences

The BSE (mad cow disease) scare in Canada this last year has not only devastated the commercial cattle industry in Canada but it is also going to cause problems for the Canadian rodeo stock contractors too. The National Finals Rodeo (NFR) is going to be getting underway in Las Vegas next week and the stock contractors are getting the short end of the stick. This story talks about how the ban on Canadian cattle coming into the U.S. will mean that no bulls from Canada will be at the NFR this year.

The ban is meant to keep Canadian cattle from entering our food supply since the government wants to keep BSE from entering the U.S. Now I am all for maintaining the safety of our meat supply in the U.S. but it sure seems to me that there should be some way of letting these athletes into the U.S. to do their jobs since they would not be entering the U.S. to be slaughtered for meat but as part of a rodeo. Well I guess that is a typical bureaucracy for you, they can't see the forest for the trees.

Bureaucrats write memoranda both because they appear to be busy when they are writing and because the memos, once written, immediately become proof that they were busy. Charles Peters