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I was just reading the news and apparantly Canada is lobbying Japan to open it's borders. ARGH!!! When (excluding the US of course) when have we ever opened our border to ANYONE that reported BSE in their country??? I may be a cattle producer but the fact is we are pandering for special treatment and it's really pissing me off!! Until Canada no other country in history (correct me if I'm wrong here) has EVER had it's border opened after homegrown BSE has been found!! Am I the only one who feels this way?? What the heck makes us so bleedin special anyway????

   

...the big investigation with the American beef problem leading to us is they just wanted to shift the blame...

   

The DNA test perfomed on the Holstien cow proved her farm of origin. She lived here (according to news reports) for 4 yrs. It takes 2 to 7 yrs for this disease to manifest itself and she wasn't showing symptoms yet. However she was only 6 yrs old. It looks to me that this latest cow is very much ours to claim.

   

... Yes it may be our fault.. But all countries have had a really lax security when it comes to Mad Cow Disease... It's just as much their fault as it is ours...

   

I shouldn't have said, our, fault... One farm is where it originated right? So its the farmers fault more or less.. One thing that pissed me off about the very first case in '03 was the fact is it was ONE cow, and they the borders are still mostly blocked...

   

I wouldn't say it's the individual farmers fault. Most farmers don't produce their own feed supplements. They buy them from the local feed mills. Unless it is labeled AND you actually read those labels (which weren't there or weren't considered a problem when the farmer in question was feeding his cows) you would never know what goes into whatever supplements you are feeding your cows. Not to mention the fact that banned substances are still present in horse supplements as well as chicken feed(non-ruminants).
Say you have horses on range with your cattle. Do you know (before the BSE cases) that you shouldn't offer your horses supplements where your cows can get at it?? I sure didn't until the warnings about horse feed came out (we don't raise horses).


In Brazil it was only one cow and we shut our border tighter then a frogs butt to their beef.

So a ask again what makes Canada so ruddy special??

   

The argument for other countries opening their borders to us is that we responded so well when the first case of BSE appeared here. We call that good science, proof that our cattle are safe.

What we should call it is lying. Our testing system is virtually non-existent and will still be wholly inadequate once the recently announced increases take effect. We dragged our feet on the feed issue and are still doing so...we have not completely banned animal proteins from cattle feed. We have had no rules on downers.

None of that is the fault of the farmers and ranchers who being bankrupted by this debacle. It is the fault of ag companies who pushed for lax or non-existent rules and the governments that listened to them. That little dance is still continuing.

   

Absolutely Rev!!

   

I just read that Ottawa is going to spend 92 million dollars (It could be I misread it and said 9.2 million) Dont you think it would be cheaper just to ban animal protein? I am the first to admit I dont know how governments are run but spending that kinda cash is outragious when all you have to do is ban that type of feed.

   

That's not all they have to do though Laconfir...at least not now. If they would have taken that step back in 1997 it likely would have been enough. If they want to get rid of BSE now they have to kill everything born before 1997, institute widespread testing, develop a system that follows beef from birth to the dinner table, develop a system that follows feed the same way, ban all live animal imports from countries that don't have rules as tough as ours.

The big ag corps will fight them every step of the way on those things.

   

Who cares about health and saftey procedures??? It will loose people money.

   

...if we didn't have good procedures.. But the fact that farmers are still losing money, mand many are going out of business, raises another question, What has our government done to help, and why didn't they help with testing before anything was found?

   

Corporations, Laconfir, corporations.

   

US. played politics with mad cow, Canadians believe
At Mexico meeting this week, PM will push Bush to fully reopen border to our beef

JACK AUBRY
CanWest News Service

Even before a case of mad cow disease was found in the U.S. last month and traced to Alberta, many Canadians suspected more cases would be found in Canada.

That's the finding of a newly released government poll, which also suggests most believe the United States was playing politics with the issue by keeping the border closed to Canadian beef.

As well, focus groups held in Calgary, Toronto and Montreal found some Canadians had negative sentiments toward Americans because of a broadly held belief that the U.S. imposed its beef ban to punish Canada for not taking part in the Iraq war.

The national poll and focus groups were conducted by Pollara early last summer, after the discovery in May of Canada's first case of bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE).

The situation was beginning to ease, until a mad cow in Washington state was linked through DNA tests to a farm in Alberta.

The Americans have now indicated they will prolong the full reopening of the border to Canadian beef, a $7-billion industry that is being ravaged by the crisis.

The issue is expected to dominate the first meeting between Prime Minister Paul Martin and U.S. President George W. Bush this week at an international meeting in Mexico.

After the first mad cow case was found last year, the survey found a slight plurality of Canadians - 43 per cent - agreed that tests would eventually show there are "at least some other cases" of cattle infected with BSE in Canada. Almost as many disagreed, at 42 per cent, while 15 per cent said they didn't know.

Later in the poll, 78 per cent of respondents agreed with the statement: "I think the U.S. border is remaining closed for reasons related to politics and economics." Only 16 per cent disagreed, while six per cent wouldn't venture an opinion.

As well, 53 per cent disagreed with a statement that said the U.S. border remained closed for reasons related to "science and public health," while only 39 per cent agreed.

Focus groups conducted for Health Canada by Pollara in late May in Calgary and Montreal found "a fair amount of negative sentiment" directed toward the U.S. Many believed the U.S. ban was part of a broader strategy to "punish" Canada for not participating in the Iraq war.

In the poll, a majority remained confident that eating Canadian beef is safe, although many - 45 per cent - said they had reduced their consumption of beef. Only five per cent said they were eating more beef.

As well, three-quarters of those polled said they believe Canada's food safety system is among the best in the world, and nine out of 10 agreed that Canada's standards of food safety are as high as any in the world.

The government-funded poll was performed between June 15 and June 19, with 1,000 respondents to a telephone survey, making for a margin of error of plus or minus 3.2 percent, 19 times out of 20. The Canadian Food Inspection Agency paid $60,000 for the polling, while Health Canada paid $28,000 for the focus groups.

In Mabton, Wash., yesterday the U.S. government ordered the killing of a further 129 cows in a herd linked to the mad cow case.

Nine came from the Canadian farm where the sick Holstein was born, and were potentially exposed to the same feed source. Officials killed 449 calves in another herd earlier this week.

Ottawa Citizen

© Copyright 2004 Montreal Gazette

   

The whole thing with the US border is a joke. If we've got it, they've got it. It's an integrated system. The only reason it took so long to find is that our testing system, and theirs, consists of not looking too hard in hopes of not finding anything.

Both cows found to have BSE could have gotten it from US-produced feed supplements that were shipped to Canada. The latest one could have been exposed in the US...by feed produced in Canada. Statisically, based only on testing figures, we could have had as many as 2000 infected cows hitting dinner tables every week because of the lack of testing we do.

Ain't that a happy thought? Good thing that such statistics aren't likely to prove true, but that is the reality of our system. Things don't slip through cracks...we build huge, gaping holes for them.

The cow, actually a young steer, that resides in my freezer right now is good...BSE free. I know that because I know that it never ate another cow. It grew up a little east of here. It ate nothing but grass and hay and wandered about freely. I was there when he was born and I was there when we took him to be killed. I paid the farmer with cash and the butcher with cash and tonight I will cook meat from that steer with non-genetically engineered veggies from my own garden that were picked and frozen by me.

We've become terribly lost lately. Some guys in suits gave us directions and it turns out they were lying. We can either take more directions from them or find our own way.

   

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