Take up-front approach on food safety
British beef producers are still reeling from the aftershocks of
a food scare that rocked their world 20 months ago. On March 20,
1996, British Secretary of Health Stephen Dorrell and Minister of
Agriculture Douglas Hogg rose in the House of Commons to announce
a possible link between Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy (BSE)
and a new strain of Creutzfeldt Jakob Disease (CJD), a
brain-destroying disease in humans.To this day, a firm link has yet to be proven. Nobel prize winner Stanley Prusiner, the University of California neurologist who first identified the BSE link to scrapie in sheep, told doctors in New York last month that he is not yet convinced that there is any link with CJD.
Uncertainty, unfortunately, doesn't sell hamburgers. Immediately after the announcement on March 20, British beef consumption fell 14 per cent, and the farmgate price of beef dropped from C$1.29 a pound to C$0.88, according to reporter David Lloyd, who covered the drama for the Daily Post in Liverpool. A subsequent ban by the European Union on beef exports, which will end up costing Westminster C$7 billion in compensation payments to farmers, remains in effect.
On the eastern side of the Atlantic, relieved Canadian and U.S. cattlemen may have dodged the BSE bullet, but there's another one in the chamber. It's called e. coli 0157:H7.
The parallels with BSE are chilling. Like BSE, which has now struck 23 people in Britain and France, e. coli strikes sporadically, with 29 outbreaks in the U.S. last year. It flared up again last month, when a U.S.-bound truckload of Western Canadian beef was found to be contaminated. Also like BSE before the blowup, e. coli has been simmering in the news pages for years.
Farm pundits such as Lloyd, who watched their industry unravel in the hands of the politicians, say e. coli is one more ticking time bomb for the North American food industry. And they say the BSE bungle should serve as a good example of how not to handle a food crisis: Deny one exists, admit one may exist, and then refuse to comment, forcing reporters to turn to sensational sources. In the end, the disease's pejorative nickname "Mad Cow Disease," coined by wordsmiths on London's Fleet Street tabloids, did the most damage of all.
"Public fears and suspicions in Britain grew in direct proportion to the unequivocal denials by politicians," write University of Guelph assistant professor Douglas Powell and Queen's University colleague William Leiss in a new book on communicating risk, called Mad Cows and Mother's Milk (McGill-Queen's University Press).
Powell and Leiss argue that trying to comfort the public with "no risk" assurances is futile and leaves a "risk information vacuum" to be filled by public paranoia. Honest labelling, quick response and a fair, understandable representation of the science are all part of effective "risk management," they say.
Not a bad book to put on the Christmas list as the North American
meat industry braces itself for "Bacteria Bovine," "Coli Cattle"
and other display type now germinating in the fertile minds of
urban headline writers.
back
LETTERS
More Wheat Board
The current debate in Western Canada is not an ideological one
over farmers having to deliver grain to one agency. Rather it's a
question of whether farmers believe using a single-desk agency,
namely the Canadian Wheat Board, is the most effective way of
export marketing their crop.
Should farmers have to deliver their entire crop of wheat and
barley to the board or should they have the option of delivering
some to the open market? The trouble with the dual marketing
system is that it has been tried before in the 1940s. It did not
work then and there is no reason why it would work now because of
the large volume of grain that would be outside the board's
control.
One of the crucial aspects of the situation is that the farmers
of western Canada produce a premium product which commands a
premium price and this is what the customers are willing to pay
for.
The other problem is that if we go to commodity trading, our crop
and prices will be set on the Minneapolis and Chicago Exchanges.
In other words, we will simply be part of the American marketing
system with no chance of gaining special advantage for our
Canadian crops and we will lose the advantage which we now gain
through the Canadian Wheat Board.
A.P. Gleave
Ottawa
Back on track
I read with great interest the "Back on Track" article in the
Sept. 9 edition and I congratulate Ellice township and the
farmers for standing up against the rails-to-trails zealots.
The back property line of our place is an abandoned rail line
that has been made into the trail from hell! Summertime is
relatively quiet - we get the odd dirt bike trying to set new
land speed records - but winter is a nightmare. The gates at
roadside intersections are open, allowing every Tom, Dick and
Crazed Maniac to roar around on snowmobiles.
I am not against the idea of nature trails. What I am against is
the wilful disregard of other peoples' property, privacy and
enjoyment. The Ontario Provincial Police can't be expected to
respond to every complaint. Indeed, they are not equipped, nor do
they have the manpower to patrol the trails. Before any more
rails are converted into trails, it should be made abundantly
clear that whatever organization gets the trail will be held
responsible for policing it.
Ian M. Dow
Orton
New Fashion lives
Just reading the September edition and noticed in "Who's signing
up for Signature Pork?" that New Fashion Pork is "now defunct."
Thought you might like to know that NFP will produce about 60,000
pigs in 1997 and upwards of 100,000 in 1998.
Mike Wilson
Rockwood
So you don't need OFAC?
By PETER HUNTON
Animal rights activists in various parts of the world have already created serious problems for production agriculture. Ontario Farm Animal Council (OFAC) program co-ordinator Crystal Mackay gave some examples in a lecture in Guelph last month. In Switzerland, for example, where cages for laying hens have been banned for some years, the domestic industry continues to dwindle, while more eggs are imported from other countries where cages are the norm.
With a budget dwarfed by those of even a few of the more than 100 animal rights groups in Ontario alone, OFAC is able to produce and distribute print and video material to a wide and influential audience. The organization is, above all, credible, thus making it accessible and friendly to those who must ensure its survival: those who make a living from raising and marketing animals for eggs, food, and fibre.
Twenty people demonstrating in a busy shopping mall get more media attention than half a million indifferent people innocently sitting at home watching television. But it is the demonstration which gets on the evening news, then gets the attention of politicians, and may finally result in legislation while the couch potatoes are still asleep at the zapper.
Farmers who are involved in any area of poultry or livestock production would do well to ponder some of the potential dangers they face if and when they are targeted by animal rights activists. At a minimum, use the following five-point plan:
- Get to know OFAC: Executive Director, Leslie Ballentine and Program Co-ordinator, Crystal Mackay, (905) 821-3880, fax (905) 858-1589.Peter Hunton is poultry specialist at the Ontario Egg Producers Marketing Board.- Know and use the official Codes of Practice for the animals you care for. This keeps industry on the right side of the mainstream animal welfare groups, whose objectives are largely shared.
- Find out what's being taught about animal agriculture in grade schools. Often there's a bias towards vegetarianism. OFAC has excellent teaching materials which can give a balanced perspective.
- Don't get involved in media exposure on your own. Get help so that the total message can be controlled and positive. OFAC helps here too.
- Don't be afraid to report animal abuse if you become aware of it. OFAC has a help-line for just this purpose.
Beware wannabe weathermen
The Canadian position on global warming for the December meeting in Kyoto, Japan, is hot hype taken from the environmentalists' Doomsday agenda.
Prime Minister Chrétien has issued marching orders to the mandarins to "beat the Americans."
Farmers need to be concerned, as energy prices aren't likely to decrease and may increase up to 50 per cent to meet the 2010 emission targets.
The Doomsday agenda has Canada being invaded by mosquitoes carrying dengue fever and malaria as the climate warms. Killer storms and prolonged droughts will wipe out the crops of those who are left.
A few facts stand in the way of the paparazzi rhetoric of the environmentalists. Satellite temperature measurements at higher altitudes have been falling since 1979. The same climate models that search for global warming proof are as variable as the data going in. Whatever happened to global warming in 1992 and again in 1997? Statistical aberration, it seems.
More disturbing is the possibility that solar variables may sharply influence global warming. The sun's overall brightness may affect temperatures; ultraviolet rays may affect wind and ozone production high in the atmosphere; and the sun's storms of magnetic fields and subatomic particles, which may affect rainfall and the amount of cloud cover, both make the answer ever more complex.
Canada has already been outfoxed in Rio in 1992, according to Environment Minister Christine Stewart. There, countries agreed to keep greenhouse gas emission to 1990 levels by 2000. Now they want to promise to get it right by 2010.
With the Liberals' proclivity to tax and the progress to date of
the global warming negotiators, farmers shouldn't sleep too
soundly on this one.
Hugh Zimmer is a tobacco and corn grower from Oxford county.
back
Take what you hear in coffee shops and barber shops with a grain of salt, but a Burlington beer trucker in for a trim recently swore he used to deliver stale beer to a local pig farmer who would mix it in the rations.
The trucker says the pigs would squeal with joy when they heard
the truck coming up the drive, but eventually the farmer had to
cancel the delivery: It appears the pigs were just too cranky the
day after.
Ever wonder where that other sock in the dryer goes?
It turned up in the Farm & Country mailbag the other day, part of
a "Cowboy Country Cookbook" promotion, along with a small sack of
coffee grounds.
Evidently, cowpokes out on the range who neglected to pack their
Melitta coffee filters, simply used the next best thing: a sock
well cured from a day in a cowboy boot.
The cookbook is published by Red Deer College Press and serves up
a compendium of recipes from the Canadian Prairies and the
Southwest U.S., including, of course, sock coffee.
Not a bad Christmas idea for $18.95: (403) 342-3561
Top-level American businesswomen pay U.S. dude ranch operators
big bucks for the pleasure of castrating a bull calf. The Ontario
wine industry may have found the equivalent with icewine
production.
Cave Springs Cellars president Leonard Pennachetti recounts a
recent black-tie dinner in Toronto. It seems the latest rage
among Toronto's cultural elite is icewine picking. How about the
"Winter Wine Experience", high-society ladies paying $1,500 for
the privilege of picking frozen grapes in a Niagara vineyard on a
minus 10 C night in January?
"These things can be attractive to people with money,"
Pennachetti says with a shrug.
No one ever said the farm equipment business is for the faint of
heart.
Stouffville Case IH dealer Don Richards recounts a "rather
strange day" recently when he sold a new combine to a customer he
had worked on for three years.
After the initial euphoria had subsided, Richards came back to
earth with a thud: "The customer sold the farm. That's why he can
afford a combine, and next year he plans to move away: Not only
out of our area, but out of our country. So now I know that our
chances of selling him more equipment are non-existent."
Richards, always one to look on the philosophical side of things,
shrugs that it's just another example of "our 'urban' farm
equipment business."
back