EDITORIAL
Where's the beef?
Early to bed, early to rise,It wasn't easy, 16 years ago, convincing producers that it was in their best interests to fund a national television beef advertising campaign. It wasn't hard, a few weeks ago, convincing them to bail out. (See page 53).
Work like heck and advertise
- Anonymous
Let's face it, the beef industry hasn't done as well as it would have liked over the years. Traditional marketing channels haven't been up to the task of selling the product to Canada's rapidly changing, fast-paced society. Harried shoppers pushs their carts past the red meat case, seeking easy to heat and serve foods and "light meals." Beef has fallen behind its competition, which recognizes that to elbow aside pasta and pizza you have to sell meals and easy prep, not big hunks of meat that roasted for hours.
Ill-conceived consumer concerns about beef's fat content, cholesterol, growth hormones, antibiotics, animal welfare, E. coli and so-called Mad Cow Disease take a toll, too. To be fair, these issues have been addressed to some degree, but there seems to be more thrust to maintaining exports than in serving consumers at home.
The Beef Information Centre's advertising campaign was killed for a variety of reasons earlier this year. Compared to other producer-funded campaigns, beef's efforts were badly under-funded. When an Ontario cattleman ships a $1,000 steer to market, a dollar goes to advertising. His dairyman neighbour spends the same when he ships $58 worth of milk. Thin resources reached few markets.
Plus, a different political reality set in. Advertising efforts aimed at consumers in populous eastern Canada became less relevant to Western producers who were shipping half of their production south of the border.
BIC also failed to maintain credibility. In the minds of the farmers and ranchers who funded the campaigns, the agencies that developed the ad campaigns and the firms that tracked their successes were too close.
With new promotion methods and targets in sight, new BIC directors could do worse than look to how the chicken industry spends its small promotion budget.
Chicken's promotion and consumer tracking efforts are completely separate. The national chicken agency regularly monitors consumer trends, then passes the information on to the provincial board, which then earmarks dollars for promotion.
BIC needs to do the same. And while decentralizing is impractical, BIC must prove that campaigns are successful and change direction quickly if necessary.
Any promotion campaign that is going to be successful has to sell two things - farm products to consumers, and itself to the people who pay the bills, farmers.
© copyright 1999 Agricultural Publishing Company Limited.
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Budget ignores cuts
For years, farm lobbyists have complained that farmers shouldered more than their fair share of burden in the fight against the federal deficit.Farmers lost hundreds of millions of dollars worth of subsidies in the 1995 budget. They have faced increased user fees. They saw income safety net funding cut 30 per cent.
Farm leaders have insisted the cutting had been too deep, too harsh, too targeted. Safety nets were left threadbare, and the need for extraordinary government aid because of the grain and hog price calamity of 1998 underscored the point.
On Feb. 16, Finance Minister Paul Martin tried to convince farmers they were getting their reward for all the suffering. The finance department budgeted December's promise of $900 million in farm aid - over two years.
Martin insisted if the government had not been tough and uncompromising in earlier years of cutting, it could not be compassionate now. The hard heart of government now can soften in the face of need.
Ottawa is projecting at least four consecutive years of balanced budgets, for the first time since the early 1950s, and that gives the government the flexibility once again to throw money at problems. "Our careful approach has ensured that we have the resources to respond to other anticipated events, while at the same time safeguarding our financial health," Martin said in his budget speech to MPs.
He cited Ottawa's special aid for victims of such catastrophes as the 1998 ice storm and the 1997 Red River flood.
Now, there is the farm income crisis. "This year, it has enabled us to support Canada's farmers who are in difficulty."
Beyond the aid money, the government also announced that more millions will be spent on agricultural biotechnology research, food safety and rural health. And like all Canadians, farmers will benefit from increased health system funding and the modest tax cuts.
But did this budget move toward reversing the pain caused by earlier cuts to agricultural programs?
Not really.
In many other areas of the economy where the cuts had inflicted obvious damage, stable and dependable funding was boosted.
Health care spending will increase. Transfers to provinces will increase. The military budget will increase.
For agriculture, though, there was no acknowledgment that the earlier cuts went too far and should be reversed.
Government support levels for Canadian farmers remain far less generous than the support received by farmers in competitor countries, including the United States and the European Union.
And the government's cost recovery, user-fee policy remains untouched. The budget offered no hint that the cost-recovery burden facing the Canadian food system will be eased, despite farmer and industry arguments that user fee levels are so high they undermine competitiveness.
More importantly, Martin and the Liberals did nothing to restore permanent annual safety net funding to more sustainable levels. Four years ago, federal safety net funding was cut by $250 million annually.
Farm groups, and even the Liberal-dominated House of Commons agriculture committee, have said Ottawa should restore some or all of the money cut in 1995 if safety net programs are to be made stable and adequate.
Instead, Martin promised a one-time, two-year extraordinary aid package, but not a permanent bolstering of program funding.
In fact, finance department projections suggest that once the aid money stops flowing in 2000, the level of agricultural subsidy and transfer funding actually will drop below 1998 levels.
Of course, federal and provincial agriculture ministers are negotiating this year to design a new generation of safety net programs, and a deal is supposed to be announced during their summer meeting in Saskatchewan.
Those talks may produce agreement among agriculture ministers that more permanent funding is necessary.
Will Martin agree?
His February budget gave no hint that the finance minister believes some of Ottawa's suddenly abundant cash should be used to reverse earlier agricultural funding cuts.
Budget 2000 should indicate whether he has been convinced.
Barry Wilson is an Ottawa-based farm journalist
In praise of an open mind - and ears
Say what you will of even the most dynamic speakers or panels at winter meetings, some of the most valuable tips can present themselves over lunch or on adjournment. I'm talking about the gems you pick up casually from folks on the next concession - the stuff you take home and apply right off the bat to make life smoother.The other morning I heard the dreaded sound of gushing water even before I reached the barn door. There was a time when this would have been a catastrophe: On top of cleaning up the mess of flooded stalls, the stable-cleaner trench would be overflowing.
At the very least we would have been cleaning until lunch time, and as we were expecting company the choice would have been between cancelling or ordering take-out.
Luckily, when this had happened in the past, the result of a broken water bowl, we'd told our neighbour Joe about it. He had some sound advice for a day like this: Cut a drain hole at the base of the stable cleaner chute. In the old, metal chute, it had meant using a torch to open up a two-by-six-inch hole. When we installed a new wooden chute, we left a three-inch gap at the junction between two sections. Now when there's an overflow, water drains outside to the barnyard instead of backing up into the dairy barn. Someone still has to keep an eye on it, but we save elbow grease. After the most recent flood we managed to get out of the barn in time to get the pies made and the meal prepared.
Another headache Joe rescued us from was the frozen-paddle syndrome, so common on a frosty morning. Following his advice, we turn on the stable cleaner for a few seconds during night milking. A foot or two is pulled ahead, jarring the paddles just enough to keep them from freezing down tight by morning. We clean the stables before supper, when we're feeding silage, so by the time we start milking after supper a thin layer of frost has settled on the chute. With that layer loosened up, my husband Neil no longer has to take a morning trip up the stable cleaner chute - I'm afraid of heights - to pry ice off the paddles. As Wainfleet farmer Frank Brown says: "There's a hard way, and there's a smart way."
Recently, one of our favourite cows was about to get a one-way ticket out because we couldn't get her settled in calf. After deciding to give her one last chance, we mentioned the problem to Dave. He'd resolved a similar situation in his herd by treating his cows for vaginitis. After the vet completed a caesarean, we had him check Tammy for vaginitis. She had it, all right. There's now a positive outlook for her and another cow we were alerted to through the experience. Otherwise, that "days open" figure gets pretty costly, as does buying replacements.
Another local, Bob - a former milk producer who's served on the Holstein Association panel for type classification standards - has been an invaluable resource when it comes to buying cattle.
Then there's Mike, who combs the classifieds. He was our best bet in finding a used manure spreader. He and another friend accompanied Neil to check one out - a two-and-a-half-hour drive away. We've never regretted the purchase, although I've found it exasperating to watch Neil take all the time in the world hosing it down after each and every use, when I seem to be the only one who can find a car wash.
"Word of mouth" is about the best way to find out about the service - good or bad - of insurance companies, lawyers and accountants. Construction, too, as we learned in seeking a contractor for work on our barn roof and some home renovation. A contractor suggested by a couple of other local farmers completed the work at thousands of dollars below the cost of estimates we'd received from others. We're extremely happy with his work and will be consulting him for any future projects.
By no means are the gems of the day limited to farming. One can't overlook the spiciness of neighbourhood news, or "expert" views on any number of topics. Two years of quadriceps (thigh) exercises recommended by my family doctor didn't relieve my leg problem. But 30 seconds with a sports medicine specialist recommended by another farmer acquaintance, John, pinpointed the problem: It was with my knee. I've since heard from physiotherapists and other health professionals that he's "the best," an observation with which my knee and I are in total agreement.
Advice can come from anywhere or at any time. And while I still have some trouble sorting the wheat from all the chaff, nevertheless, I'm keeping my ear to the ground for the kind of information you could never thank a person enough for, let alone buy!
Margaret Comfort partners a family dairy farm in St. Catharines
High-tech tools tracking foodborne nasties
The retired Memphis couple had settled into a comfortable lunchtime routine after 46 years of marriage. As depicted by the media accounts, the 71-year-old retired copper-tubing salesman loved ham sandwiches, while his 65-year-old homemaker wife fancied Ball Park franks.But a routine hot dog late last September led to headaches, diarrhea and fatigue a few weeks later. On Nov. 18, she died in hospital of listeriosis. And on Feb. 2, 1999, another Memphis man who lost his wife to hot dogs contaminated with the bacterium listeria monocytogenes filed the first of what is expected to be many wrongful death lawsuits against Chicago-based Sara Lee Corp., producer of the Ball Park brand. So far, the worst listeria outbreak since 1985 has been linked to 12 deaths, three miscarriages and sickness in 79 inhabitants in 16 U.S. states.
Six years ago, E. coli O157:H7 in hamburgers served at the Jack-in-the-Box fast-food chain were responsible for sickening some 700 people and killing four children. At the time, a spokesman for Children's Hospital in Seattle summarized public perception of the North American food supply by stating, "This has been a nightmare for the parents. To think that something as benign as hamburger could kill a kid is just startling to most people."
Add hot dogs.
It's a measure of the technological advances in the U.S. that the outbreak was even picked up. In retrospect, the first cases began in August 1998. In early November, as state reports began to trickle in to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta, a definite increase in what is considered the annual average for listeria in the U.S. - about 1,850 illnesses and 425 deaths - was noticed. A standard but exceedingly detailed questionnaire was developed: Those who had gotten sick were asked to cast their mind back to what they had eaten in the previous eight weeks.
The first crack in the case came Nov. 15, when DNA fingerprinting tests of listeria samples sent to the CDC and a laboratory at Cornell University revealed that a cluster of patients had the same genetic type of the bacterium, serotype 4b. Suddenly, these seemingly disparate cases scattered around the U.S. had a common thread, connected through the use of an Internet-based system of comparing DNA fingerprints in the U.S. called Pulsenet.
CDC investigators next realized that based on their questionnaires 80 per cent of those with the serotype 4b strain reported eating hot dogs, compared with 30 per cent of people who had other strains. Finally, in mid-December, a package of hot dogs retrieved from a patient's home tested positive for listeria monocytogenes serotype 4b. That triggered the voluntary recall of products produced at Sara Lee's Bil Mar Foods plant in Michigan on Dec. 22.
Currently, investigators think that excess dust produced during a summer maintenance project at the plant may have been the vehicle for widespread contamination of products.
Listeria monocytogenes is everywhere, routinely found in a variety of mammals, birds, water, soil and foods. Current cases notwithstanding, processors have, for the most part, thoroughly cleaned up their operations following a number of outbreaks in the 1980s, and incidents of listeriosis were declining. Some of the more famous ones include 41 cases and 18 deaths in Nova Scotia in 1981 traced to cabbage in coleslaw; 49 cases and 14 deaths in Boston in 1983 with suspected links to milk; and 142 cases and 46 deaths in Los Angeles in 1985 traced to soft, nacho-style cheese made with contaminated milk.
However, unlike other outbreaks in the post Jack-in-the-Box era of foodborne illness, the current listeria outbreak has garnered relatively little press. For example, the New York Times and Washington Post, according to a Knight-Ridder computer search, have each written three stories on Sara Lee, compared with 24 and 16 stories respectively about the 1997 recall of 25 million pounds of ground beef processed at Hudson's Foods in Columbus, Neb., in which 17 people got sick and no deaths were reported.
Part of the reason is that the recall occurred just before Christmas, when many of the reporters familiar with the beat would be holidaying. More convincing, though, is that the media coverage has yet to catch up with the changing nature of foodborne illness. Rather than a large outbreak associated with one facility or geographic area - providing one focus for media coverage - this one seemed isolated.
But that will change. Systems like Pulsenet are helping to link illnesses that would previously be passed off as sporadic. And American consumers will drive change, too. Already, more than a dozen school districts in western Michigan have stopped serving hot dogs or lunch meat of any kind over concern with the meat-related listeria outbreak. Wyoming (Mich.) public schools director of operations Bill Nelson told the Grand Rapids Press, "We are serving no hot dogs, no lunch meat and no turkey-type products. I don't care who makes them."
Doug Powell is an assistant professor in plant agriculture at University of Guelph. His new book, "Reclaiming Dinner," will be published this summer
© copyright 1999 Agricultural Publishing Company Limited.
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