How working around BSE led to working with people: when the livestock export industry faced a severe downturn, Canada Livestock Services turned its attention to recruiting skilled foreign workers using expertise it already had.

Prior to the discovery of the first Canadian case of bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE), Canada Livestock Services Ltd. (CLS) in Lloydminster earned roughly 90 percent of its multi-million dollar business by exporting embryos, semen and live cattle to China.

"Developing trade with a foreign country takes years and many face-to-face meetings," suggests CLS President Syd Palmer.

When BSE hit the industry, Palmer had a load of dairy cattle ready for shipping. Even though the cattle had not yet left their farms, CLS had already paid out more than $300,000 in health testing and selection costs.

Four years earlier, the Chinese government had decreed that every child and army member was to receive a daily glass of fresh milk. This fueled the uptake of Canadian dairy cattle genetics. When the border closed due to BSE, it was an economic blow to many dairy producers across Canada.

For Palmer, however, it marked a time of rapid change with positive outcome. One year earlier, CLS had already begun to shift its focus from exporting Canadian cattle to working with Chinese people interested in starting new lives in Saskatchewan.

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"It sounds like an unlikely shift," admits Palmer, "but we had an office in Beijing and we were familiar with the system. Whether it's matchmaking animals or people, it's a matter of knowing the regulations and doing the proper paperwork. We are in the brokerage business with government contacts on both sides of the globe.

We have placed people in Alberta but our main focus is Saskatchewan. We've recently opened another sub-office in the Philippines."

CLS has already introduced more than thirty Chinese people to Saskatchewan from welders to cooks to heavy duty mechanics to workers at Stomp Pork in the Leroy area.

Palmer says bringing people to Saskatchewan from other regions of the world generates better international understanding and new opportunities that we can't even predict. This is confirmed in his telling of a Chinese fellow who worked on a Canadian farm and then became instrumental in securing a large Chinese cattle contract.

Since BSE, Palmer's business has done an about-face with 80 per cent of its focus on connecting skilled foreigners with opportunities in western Canada.