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HOUSTON, July 18-- Sitting atop his horse on an overcast day, Texas cattle rancher Wayland Kelley surveyed the cows and calves that grazed on a 600-acre field his family leases in south of Houston, the United States. Sales of cattle have been steady for Kelley and his uncles Rick Kelley and Leonard "Butch" Kelley, who began the family-owned Cow House Cattle Company in 2003 in Hitchcock, Texas. With the market reopening of U.S. beef exports to China, cattle sales are expected to go from good to better -- not only for the Kelley family but for ranchers throughout the United States. The United States has reached agreements with China on final details of a protocol to allow it to export beef to China, the U.S. Department of Agriculture said on June 12. In 2003, China shut its market to American beef after a case of bovine spongiform encephalopathy, also known as Mad Cow Disease, was detected in the United States. In Texas, beef producers say they plan to capitalize on the re-energized market of China, "The reopening of trade will make it a lot better for the cattle industry as a whole," said Kelley, who raises cattle on leased grazing land in Galveston County. "I feel that it will give us smaller ranchers the opportunity to grow and to produce better beef." Virtually every sector of the U.S. beef industry -- from the ranchers to the feed lot owners that fatten the cattle for sale, and the slaughterhouses that process the meat -- are praising the news from China. | 
