AGRICULTURE Minister Tony Burke's move to order an import risk assessment on imported beef is a clever one.

It effectively ends any lingering controversy over the importation-of-beef issue and avoids weeks of media coverage at a time the Government can ill-afford it.

It halts the opposition's momentum and forces them to come up with a new topic to attack the Government over.

The protests of the Greens, Nationals, Liberal Bill Heffernan and independent Nick Xenophon were getting plenty of traction and media regardless of how valid the Government considered them to be.

That group successfully pushed their Bill through the senate on Monday - the Bill would have forced an IRA had Mr Burke not already announced one.

If successful, it would provide better country-of-origin labelling and demand birth-to-death traceability of stock from importing countries.

We know the US and Canada cannot deliver this except in rare cases.

The Bill was sensible but Mr Burke's move had rendered it largely impotent before it got through the senate on Monday.

The Government will label it obsolete before crushing it in the Lower House in what will likely be the last the public will hear of the issue for quite some time.

The only foreseeable way Mr Burke's move could backfire would be if the US genuinely believed the IRA was a trade barrier.

It's hard to see how it could - Mr Burke rightly points out Australia has always used IRAs as a way of developing import protocols.