Regarding this whole saga that we've been through over the last three years or so, there have been frustrations on our part as well. From the start, I remember Secretary Veneman saying Canadian beef is safe, but we have this process--and we have tried to do what we can too.
Now you mentioned the political angle. Obviously politics enters any government decision. But we have been trying to base this on science and structure the rule-making in a way that politics cannot get in the road. Obviously the challenges that were made to the USDA slowed down the process.
There were a few other events here and there. When we had an animal with BSE, that got people wondering about things. You had another animal that maybe was outside the band of what we were expecting, and so on, so we had to go back and do the....
Right now, when you had that animal of fifty months, there was just no way we could go forward with the risk assessment, as it was made. We had to wait on the study that was done here and incorporate the results into it. So there wasn't an alternative, and the rule-making process is very slow.
As far as I can see, the best way to try to expedite these sorts of things is to get internationally accepted standards that we all can play under. You've been working in the OIE; we've been working in the OIE. We think that by doing this we can get some internationally accepted standards, so that the reaction will always be in a certain way and we won't have to go through this whole process again. But the first time around is always going to be the longest one, and that's really what we're facing.
Secretary Johanns has indicated all the way through that he is very committed to getting this border back open completely and normalizing trade. He has not faltered on that. He said he saw nothing in the study on the fifty-month animal that altered this for him.
So that is going forward, and there's very much a commitment to get that taken care of. We know if we don't, as he says, dot all the i's and cross all the t's, then we're going to be subject to challenge and possibly a successful challenge.
That's really what the ninth circuit court said when they looked at our first rule and it was challenged. The courts said that we are empowered by Congress to make these sorts of decisions. So as long as we do our homework, or do our efforts to ensure that what we're doing is having the impacts we claim, then they're going to yield to our judgment on this. We think that will hold and we'll be able to move this forward without delay.