LUNDBRECK, Alberta -- On opposite sides of the blue-cold Rocky Mountains, two men on horseback roam the grassy prairie each day, checking the cattle on their ranches.
Until two years ago, Hugh Lynch-Staunton in Alberta and Jim Baker in Hot Springs, Montana, were kindred souls in the saddle -- strangers who shared the same pride and tradition, doing the same work on tough land.
Then four cows came between them.
The discovery of four Canadian head of cattle with mad cow disease in the past two years has drawn a line of anger and suspicion between cattlemen who used to operate in seamless cooperation between Canada and the United States.
It has sundered a multibillion-dollar business that straddled the border, bringing fundamental changes in the industry that puts steak on American tables and sends hamburger worldwide.
While the dispute is being fought in the courts, ranchers in Canada seethe as they lose money, while ranchers in the United States raise the alarm that Canadian beef may ruin the reputation of their herds if the closed border is reopened to Canadian cows.
The key question for consumers -- whether beef is safe to eat -- sometimes becomes lost in the clash over money, a U.S. federal judge has concluded.
Canadian ranchers have lost more than $4 billion, according to a government study. U.S. ranchers have lost almost $3 billion in export sales by taint of proximity to Canada. Canadian federal and provincial governments have paid another $1.5 billion to stave off wholesale bankruptcies on the ranches.
Without those emergency payments, many cattlemen would have gone bust, Lynch-Staunton said. His income has plunged now that his cattle are not allowed across the border. He recently suggested to his two sons and daughter, half in jest, that they should use their college degrees to get jobs off the ranch.
His joke met with stony silence, he said. His children, who wandered off after college, eventually came back to help raise 700 head of cattle on Antelope Butte Ranch in Lundbreck, 80 miles south of Calgary.
Now, they take turns riding the range on horseback twice a day, watching for wolves and the occasional grizzly bear, working with the same pride honed through four generations of ranching.
"There's something about growing things, about dealing with lives," said Lynch-Staunton, a fit man of 61 with sun-washed eyes and a weathered face.
