Law allows agricultural sales to island

  BY CAROL ROSENBERG

  The latest large-scale loophole in the U.S. economic embargo on Cuba goes moo -- nearly 150 times.

  A Naples rancher, J.P. Wright & Co., announced Thursday that it had delivered 148 dairy cattle to the island this week in what the firm said was the largest successful U.S. shipment of cows to Cuba since the communist revolution.

  The shipment, the latest of several summer deliveries, raised to nearly 450 the number of U.S. cattle that have been sent to Cuba since Congress in 2000 exempted U.S. food and agricultural products from the overall trade embargo, provided Cuba pays cash.

  ''This is a significant step toward restoring positive relations between the people of Cuba and Florida,'' company chief executive John Parke Wright said in a press release. "This exchange opens the doors to restored ties between family farms in the U.S. and Cuba.''

  Company publicist Dan Krassner said all the cows were meant for island farms, with their output aimed at producing milk and ice cream for people in Cuba.

  The announcement was accompanied by a picture of Wright in a classic Cuban guayabera shirt, arm in arm and sharing cigars with a likewise attired Ramón Castro Ruz, Fidel Castro's older brother.

  John Kavulich II, president of the U.S.-Cuba Trade and Economic Council, an independent monitoring group, valued the deal at about $300,000.

  Since Congress passed the exemption, he said, Cuba has purchased about $250 million in agricultural and food products, such as cattle, corn, wheat, soy rice and poultry.