| Alberta Premier Ralph Klein is off to India to sell oil and gas. Great timing for a trip planned long before the mad cow troubles. We can only hope he avoids any remarks that involve shooting, burying or even eating cows.
Behind him, Alberta wallows in an agri-business hell as beef prices plummet below grain on the commodity market. The provincial government produces bailout packages only helpful to corporate producers and appeases rural MLAs with vague promises about rural strategies.
A trade mission to India in the middle of a crisis beats last May’s fishing trip to British Columbia. It still demonstrates that the Alberta and Canadian governments remain in denial over the threat to agriculture and our health in this country.
BSE is not a trade issue. It is a health and safety issue. It became a trade issue only because other governments refuse to ignore their citizens’ concerns about food safety. Canadians outside of the agriculture economy should be thanking globalization and our trade partners for forcing our leaders to respond to this issue. Our concerns about food safety went unanswered. A 2001 Ipsos-Reid survey found 61 per cent of Canadians were concerned about mad cow disease occurring in Canada, and 59 per cent believed that at some point a Canadian will contract Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease – the human version of BSE.
The same survey found 76 per cent of Canadians trust our government to protect our food supply. It turned out to be a misplaced faith. Yet Canadians should expect their governments to recognize and take appropriate steps to manage threats to the food supply and a major export industry.
Instead we were given the most limited response acceptable to protect our food and industry, the 1997 federal ban-with-some-exceptions on feeding ruminant animal to other ruminants. No extra money was provided or effort made to enforce the new rules.
When the inevitable failure of that limited response came in May 2003, the federal and provincial politicians produced the usual denials, misdirection and blame. It was another example of Canadian politicians failing to think beyond their clique, their party and the borders of their town, province or country when faced with a known threat. The fallout from the crisis is another example of why such failures are unacceptable and damaging in a complex and inter-connected world.
Finding other priorities than prevention of known threats is an age-old government ailment. The naïve, about 76 per cent of us according to Ipsos-Reid, seem to think governments should be getting better at governing. The best you can hope for is they will react appropriately when the predictable crisis hits and avoid dramatic but useless solutions such as body temperature screens in airports (SARS) or armed guards on commercial flights (9/11).
The BSE crisis was inevitable and a lesson in how not to react was readily available. All Alberta and Canada’s three-term governments had to do was learn from Great Britain’s painful 16-year experience with BSE. Instead, Canadians were given tried-and-true denials and publicity stunts.
In 1990 the British government was claiming bans on its beef exports due to BSE were trade issues not health issues. The British Agriculture minister was eating a hamburger for the media to prove British beef was safe. His four-year-old daughter refused to sample her father’s "delicious" hamburger, which explains why Klein and Chretien did not bring any younger and wiser family members along for their publicity stunts.
The denials and publicity stunts disappeared seven years and 180,000 cases of BSE later. By 1997 British scientists had concluded 21 people had contracted a new version of Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease by eating BSE-infected meat. A public inquiry had concluded the government had been slow to recognize the threat to public health and had misled the public over health issues for fear of harming beef exports.
The world was informed immediately when BSE was discovered in Alberta. That appears to be the only lesson learned, and Klein complained we were punished for being so open.
Real openness would include Klein ditching his BSE-is-a-trade-issue message. The Canadian and Alberta governments need to admit they failed us on BSE and SARS. The time has come for governments to openly examine what real threats globalization is creating for Canadians and our economy. Only then can they inform their citizens and involve them in finding ways to minimize those threats.
Wayne Forsberg, the Alberta farmer who raised the infected Holstein put it perfectly. "(T)hey're talking $60 million for the province of Alberta (to test cows). Well, that's a pretty small price in comparison," he said. "Even if we had to pay for it ourselves as producers, it would cost only $30 an animal. That $30 is pretty cheap compared to the $300 an animal we're losing now."
Web resources
www.producer.com, click on BSE News and Updates - Complete BSE coverage from a farm perspective
cnews.canoe.ca/CNEWSDangerousFoods0103/08_safety-can.html — Food safety poll results.
www.cnn.com/interactive/world/europe/0010/cjd/bse.gif - Worldwide cases of BSE.
www.producer.com/current_news/bse/20040109bse.html - Canada’s new BSE testing rules.
news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/september/29/newsid_2542000/2542585.stm- British BSE timeline. |
Copyright ©2004 FFWD. All rights reserved.