Saskatchewan's beef industry is hailing the partial reopening of the United States and Mexican borders to Canadian beef as an important first step to helping the industry recover from the devastation of the last few months.

The border to Canadian beef exports closed on May 20 after one cow in Alberta was found to have bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE), also known as mad cow disease. Over 30 countries followed suit, including the next biggest importers of beef: Mexico, Japan, Korea, Taiwan and Singapore.

"This will help the slaughter cattle business by about 40 per cent, as about 40 per cent of their business is boxed beef. It will help relieve the pressure in the feedlots, which will make some room for feeding our calves," said Tom Grieve, a cattle producer in the Fillmore area.

"I think the opening of the U.S. border was the best news I've had in about 80 days, and the opening of the Mexican border was equally as good. It wasn't everything we hoped for, but it's a crack in the dam," added Saskatchewan producer Neil Jahnke, national president of the Canadian Cattlemen's Association (CCA).

He noted Canada is now the first country to ever have an instance of BSE and subsequently be allowed to export beef back into the U.S.

"It's a big first step. Our scientists were with us right from the beginning, and (the U.S.) has accepted that. We think it's an opportunity to work with our NAFTA partners to make BSE a more reasonable problem in the future," said Jahnke.

The United States announced on Friday afternoon they would begin to accept some beef, mainly boneless boxed beef from cattle under 30 months of age, fresh or frozen liver, boneless veal from calves 36 weeks or younger, as well as boneless sheep or goat meat.

Mexico followed suit on Monday, allowing boneless meat cuts from cattle under 30 months of age and lamb and goats under 12 months of age. This meat comprises about 85 per cent of what Mexico imports from Canada.

Premier Lorne Calvert said he was happy to see the partial reopening of the U.S. border, and urged the Americans to take steps to further open their markets to allow for the shipment of live cattle.

"This is a first step and a strong endorsement of the safety of Canada's beef supply. It also reflects the hard work and dedication of thousands of Canadians at all levels who have worked to find the source of the problem and secure the safety of the beef herd," said the premier.

With Canada's number one and two beef exporters now partially opening their borders, Jahnke was asked if the other countries might follow suit soon in reopening their borders.

"I wouldn't put a time frame on it, but we hope these other countries will follow suit shortly. We might see a bigger opening in some of those countries, and the Americans have assured us they're fast-tracking their ability to export live cattle," he said.

Jahnke's wife, Marilyn, president of the Saskatchewan Stock Growers Association, agreed this is "a good first step" for the cattle industry.

"Hopefully it won't take that long" for a further opening of the U.S. border, she added, noting the U.S. is drawing up the new rules for exporting live cattle.

"Whatever the new rules are, everybody will have to live with them. The only thing we had rules for before was to close the borders; we didn't have anything on opening those borders again," she said.

Even a partial opening of the border is going to help, Marilyn added; "Anything that allows us to ship some beef, whether domestic or exporting, will help. Mexico is really coming on, we just started moving into that country in the last couple of years."

With the increase of domestic use of beef by consumers and retailers, she said she hopes their support of the beef industry will continue on, as producers are not out of the woods yet.

As the fall is the normal time when cow-calf producers start selling off their calves, the Stock Growers held a recent meeting to discuss the issue of how producers should handle it this fall, said Grieve.

"The general consensus was to urge producers to hold onto their calves and not make a glut in the market; that will help keep the prices up," he said, suggesting producers might have to wait three or four months to allow the backlog to be dealt with.

Grieve expects this situation will lead to changes in how cattle are handled and processed in Canada, and suggested the new rules which emerge may end up putting Canadian producers at a disadvantage with their trading partners, unless all countries are put on a level playing field.

In the meantime, he said the main thing is for local producers to make arrangements to gradually market their cattle this fall, especially so producers don't lose all their equity as they would if they dumped all of their cattle at once.

Another local cow-calf producer, Janet Ledingham, said Canada's beef industry will learn many valuable lessons from this situation, and by being able to regain access to borders will help make Canada an example to other cattle-producing nations.

"What happened to Canada may send a signal, 'don't test, don't report.' We need a practical set of rules to deal with this without shutting down an entire industry," she said.

She agreed with Jahnke that Canada has set an important precedent in being the first country to have borders reopened to the U.S. after dealing with an instance of BSE, and hopes the international body dealing with animal exports, the OIE, will create new rules to enable this to happen in the future.

As far as producers creating a glut in the market, Ledingham feels most producers are going to be fairly cautious about marketing their animals until they see what is going to happen price-wise.

She said many producers, including herself, prepared themselves for the possibility of having to hold on to their animals a little longer this fall. In her own case, she planted more acres to barley to enable the keeping of calves for a longer period than in most falls.

The cattle industry estimates its 90,000 producers, along with feedlots, processing plants and truckers, have been losing about $11 million a day since the borders closed in late May.