U.S. bans Canadian poultry

indeed.. it was in reference to yours, i was agreeing.. i just didnt quote you.

my bad

Yeah, I'm pretty sure if only the american could buy american grown chickens for thanksgiving, the national debt would be killed and cured.

Likely, this is posturing, and as usual, PRblowjob to placate the voting masses that have brief discomforts watching the TVDinner news before gassing up the SUV. You know, the "Nothing to see, your bubble is as cushioned as ever" technique.

OR...
The Avian Bird Flu is a much more serious matter than they want us to know.

One look at how Britain treated BSE in the decade before hell broke loose should be enough to at least raise that question.

Bush's answer to avian flu would be to invade China, cosh heesh purdy shmart, eh? [flag]

Wonder if this has anything at all to do with the rather hardline PM Martin took about softwood last week in while in Asia...or it could be a clever scheme to get the world to stop buying Canadian chicken, opening up a greater portion of the market to American chicken. Once that (phase I) is completed, it will allow for KFC to expand it's overseas operations and market share (phase II). After that, it naturally follows that that Colonel will become the supreme ruler of the world (Phase IV). First, be would have to be brought back to life (phase III). Lastly...wait? what was i talking about? Oh yeah...remote possibilities for why the US 'really' shut down the border to BC poultry

Hong Kong, Japan, ban B.C. poultry imports

Hong Kong and Japan have joined the United States and Taiwan in slapping an import ban on poultry from British Columbia.

The temporary block comes in response to a single case of avian flu found in a duck on a Fraser Valley farm.

The Canadian Food Inspection Agency says the infection at the B.C. farm is different from the virulent outbreak among birds in Southeast Asia, which has been blamed for more than 60 deaths. The H5 virus in B.C. is a low pathogenic North American strain.

Still, officials have started to kill the 56,000 birds on the farm where the duck was found to prevent further spread.

Hong Kong has been on alert for signs of bird flu because the city's economy was ravaged by the 2003 outbreak of SARS, or severe acute respiratory syndrome.

Meanwhile, U.S. officials sent a letter Monday to Canada's chief veterinary officer, Dr. Brian Evans, to inform him of the ban.

"We were able to ensure that the restriction was placed on B.C. mainland and not on (Vancouver) Island or other poultry sources," Evans told CTV Newsnet.

The U.S. will no longer import poultry products from the B.C. mainland until they get a full assessment of the situation in the five-kilometre radius around the affected farm.

When contacted by CTV News, the U.S. Department of Agriculture would only say, "USDA is imposing restrictions consistent with international guidelines."

The U.S. provides a market for about seven per cent of B.C. poultry production.

In cases like this, Evans said countries could ban poultry products from an entire country, a distinct region like a province, or the affected area. Such interim bans normally last 21 days.

Evans says he believes the U.S. might be willing to restrict the ban if a probe shows that the five-kilometre zone around the farm is free of the virus.

"The activities that we've been undertaking since Friday night's announcement hopefully will allow us to complete the compilation and reporting of that information, get it to the U.S., hopefully as early mid-week," he said.

"Overall, I would have to say we're encouraged that the overall international response has been quite measured, quite respectful of the measures we've put in place and ... respectful of our ability to manage the situation," Evans said.

Poultry meat in Canada remains safe for human consumption, he said.

Industry reaction

Mike Dungate of the Chicken Farmers of Canada said his group had hoped the U.S. had issued a less sweeping ban at the outset.

"They saw that we worked well to contain a small area and we would have hoped that they would have not put it as such a large area as the whole mainland of B.C.," he said.

B.C. officials said on Friday that they found the case of H5 avian flu at a commercial duck farm.

Crews began euthanizing 56,000 birds with carbon dioxide gas on Sunday night. CFIA veterinarian Cornelius Kiley says the cull took place under a "tremendous amount of biosecurity."

Kiley says the plan is to move nothing away from the farm. The duck and geese carcasses will be composted at the site.

The farm will be under a 21-day quarantine, after which it will be tested again.

Four other farms connected to the affected farm are also under quarantine, and officials are preparing for culls there depending on the results of tests.

Farmer Brian Ens is one of those whose farm is locked down. He expressed some frustration with the process and thought an even quicker response had been warranted. He wanted measures like closing all the area roads.

"They haven't figured out how it was tracked last time, so why not be over- cautious this time, close it down, seal it off, deal with it and then continue from there," he said.

An outbreak of H7N3 avian flu in the spring of 2004 led to the slaughter of 17 million birds in the Fraser Valley.

CTV News Link

Last time I checked the Chinese and Japanese don't celebrate Thanksgiving. Maybe we should send them an email.

It's easy to say that the US is being protectionist but we are after all talking about a pretty nasty disease. And yeah, the US did go way overboard on the whole mad cow scare, but the only people I was really mad at were the meat packers out west...their prices barely budged even though beef cattle hadn't been that cheap in decades.

Anyway, illogical protectionism usually only hurts the country engaging in it...every time the US is protectionist it merely convinces another country not to sign a free trade deal with them.

Bird flu is coming, this year or next. Can't stop birds from following the sun.

The bird flu thing isn't 'protectionism' because as soon as we have it in the USA a whole list of countries will ban our poultry from being imported into their lands. Our turn is coming, sure enough, and this is just a delaying tactic.

But it isn't 'protectionism' as once the news gets going that bird flu is in North America poultry sales in the USA will predictably plummet - just the same as beef sales plummeted on the news of BSE. No one will benefit from this problem.

Lets face it, those yanks would do anything they could to drive Canada's products out, I mean living in England but moving to Vancouver in 2007 I still dislike the Americans coz they r cocky, stupid people that get hill billys in charge. Im sure if Bush got his way, the Confederancy would be back in a flash.

~ http://207.44.176.64/~scott108/click.ph ... tanicDemon ~
clicking this link will be much appreciated thanks

The Bush admin wants more globalism, not less. In some cases, this clashes with the hardcore voter base, the ranchers and farmers which often extends to the hardcore christian right. But having only 2 parties (which could be debated) means that the pubs have the fundamentalist right in a stranglehold because the middle classes (which comprise most of their voter base there) will always vote on abortion and gay marriage before economic policy. Foreign policy? Doesn't even hit the radar screen.

But, really... if you look at the beef and the poultry industry it has essentially been governed by the corporations anyway for many, many years.

There is a beef monopoly right now (in the US), and the way the poultry industry operates there is insane. And largely in part because of the fast food industry.

So, this is not about America trying to avoid having to buy canadian. This is about protecting it's own market by demonstrating to the global audience that they are taking all precautions to avoid their own domestic case of the avian flu.

I'll be the first one to lay fault where it belongs, but not just for the sake of doing it, this does absolutely nothing in the way of productive reasoning.

I would love Canada to be in a position where all our food (that can be anyway) is grown and slaughtered here with absolutely no reliance on foreign markets for meat processing/rendering.

Additionally, I'd love it if there were NO foreign markets to sell meat to.
This is part of the motivation for covering up potential disease threats, in fear of having foreign markets shut down. When you are producing for your own people, the pressure to deceive and prolong (as well as the political grandstanding which is ultimately useless in terms of health) is much lessened.