"I guess any self-respecting rancher would have shot, shoveled and shut up, but he didn’t do that."
– Ralph Klein, September, 2003.
You can expect to hear Alberta Premier Ralph Klein’s most damaging and infamous verbal gaffe of the mad-cow crisis repeated by political aspirants south of the border during this year’s elections, according to a representative of the Consumer Federation of America (CFA) – a prospect that may further damage Canada’s chances of having the U.S. border re-opened to Canadian beef.
Carol Tucker Foreman, the CFA’s Director of Food Policy, told Fast Forward that senatorial and congressional candidates in cattle-producing states are likely to point north and remind Amercian voters of Klein’s comments should the Canadian beef industry come anywhere close to shipping live cattle south in the next ten months. "I’m sure somebody’s going to try it," Tucker Foreman said.
On an equally ominous note for the Canadian beef industry, Tucker Foreman pointed out that most states won by President George W. Bush in the 2000 election were beef producers, and there is little chance any candidate will win votes by pushing for a quick resumption of Canadian imports. Bush, of course, hails from Texas, the largest beef-producing state in the U.S..
Klein made his shoot, shovel and shut up remark at the Western Governors'
Association annual meeting in Big Sky, Montana, in September. At the time, the Canadian beef industry had spent millions of dollars doing everything possible to convince Americans that its product was perfectly safe, in the wake of the discovery of a mad cow in Alberta in May. Millions of tax dollars were also spent on that effort by the federal and several provincial governments.
In December, just as industry representatives were becoming confident the Americans would open the border to live cattle sales, an Alberta-born cow was discovered to be infected with mad cow disease in Washington State. No one doubts that yet another massive public relations campaign will have to be conducted to convince the Americans that Canadian live cattle and butchered beef are safe. However, Klein’s remark will have either made such a campaign an exercise in futility, at worst, or added millions of dollars on to the cost of such an effort, at best – millions of dollars that might have, otherwise, gone to the aid of impacted cattlemen.
Alberta Liberal Leader Ken Nicol seems to be hoping Klein’s statement will be forgotten.
"It was unfortunate, given where he said it but we should put it behind us," Nicol says.
If wannabe American senators and congressmen resort to using Klein’s gaffe on the campaign trail, then, and only then, should Klein’s comment be put on trial again, according to Nicol.
"If it’s used in the U.S. and results in country-of-origin labelling or a continued ban, Ralph’s words will be judged," Nicol says.
Seattle Post-Intelligencer columnist Joel Connelly doesn’t necessarily agree that Klein’s slip should be forgotten. Connelly thought Klein’s loose-lipped quip so extraordinary and important that he bestowed the Foot-in-Mouth Award upon Klein in his annual year-end Dubious Distinctions Awards.
Tucker Foreman – who was former president Jimmy Carter’s assistant secretary of agriculture (responsible for meat and poultry inspection) – commented, "I can’t imagine what he must have been seized with to say that. Clearly, he wasn’t thinking." Tucker Foreman likened Klein’s faux pas to, "a used car salesman telling one of his employees to roll back the odometer in front of a customer." |
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