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bakSovrbar
Member
Joined: 14 Feb 2010
Posts: 51
Location: Maple Creek, Saskatchewan, Canada
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Oldtimer
Rancher
Joined: 10 Feb 2005
Posts: 24330
Location: Northeast Montana
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 Posted: Sun Feb 14, 2010 11:41 am Post subject: |
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AMEN- Sheri...This needs printing.....
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The devil inside
9 February 2010 88 views 2 Comments
Some of you may not like what I’m fixing to say this week, but I can deal with that.
If you have any interest at all in the beef business and haven’t yet read page four, please do so and come back to me.
A dedicated reader alerted me to the American beef being sold in Canadian grocery stores and I went after it like a pitbull. I talked to pretty near a dozen ranchers and almost every single one of them was outraged. And only one allowed me to quote their angry outbursts. And for the record, I don’t think I would have bleeped out the curse words. You know why? Because it’s a genuine and honest reaction, a gut response and beyond all else, it was real. And I can’t be the only one that craves a little realness more than fish craves water. And yet, we’re drowning in our own BS and no one wants to acknowledge the stench.
In the course of my cattle industry coverage, I have been fortunate to have encountered folks from all over North America and a few other cattle-producing countries like Australia. Some subscribe and others read the coverage through a mailing list. And this story is a wee bit embarassing. And as the phone became heavier in my hand and this entire sorry situation became heavier in mind, I think I started to lose my grip, just a little.
Rewind a couple few years to the Canadian cattle industry as it bloated and grew, in lust with America’s seemingly insatiable market. And then freeze at May of 2003, the day the cow business stood still.
BSE like a thief in the night descended upon this industry like a plague. And all of a sudden, we start paying attention to American grassroots cattlemen’s group, R-CALF. They received headlines (and numerous death threats) for trying to keep Canadian cattle out of their country.
They were denounced as being opportunistic protectionists trying to finish off an already-crippled industry. And maybe that would have been accurate, if in 1999, had the group not filed a complaint against Canada countervailing and for using the U.S. as a dumping ground for excess cattle.
The theory? That retailers and packers were using cheaper Canadian cattle take a larger margin and to manipulate markets in an effort to force domestic prices down.
Oh, but then it was just free enterprise, right? Painted with self-indignant contempt, we wore our persecution complex like a fine suit and armed with OIE guidelines in one hand and a NAFTA bible in the other, we sent our politicians marching to open those borders. And now fully open, we’re still drowning.
In 2007, we introduced expensive SRM removal laws to safeguard the system from BSE-causing contamination. The brainchild of a CFIA drunk on power and inflated self-worth, the few national packers we had left were stuck with expensive changes in processing, but don’t worry – they shared that burden with cattle producers on the edge of the abyss.
And what of traceability – a beast the U.S. managed to crawl out from under just last week? Who paid for that? The packer? The retailer? The consumer? Yeah, keep guessing.
So instead of reassuring foreign markets with blanket BSE testing like every other country in the world did – except for Canada and the U.S. – we just introduced unmanageable, unrealistic and financially impossible regulations, quickening the death of this business.
Perhaps most incredibly, while the government didn’t even blink when sending the industry to its knees with extra legislated costs, it also didn’t even think about holding our trading partners to the same standards. We pay through the nose to send it out and because of ‘free’ trade agreements, we are obligated to bring in foreign meat.
And then under the burden of mounting costs and pressures, the politicians and the big hat cowboys running the industry organizations decide not to take on issues like competition, price discovery and captive supply.
Instead, they decide the best thing for the industry is to try and stop America from telling her people where their beef is coming from.
Is this what your check-off money is paying for?
Do we really want to fight COOL? Do we really want to keep any meat consumer – of any nationality – from knowing where their food was grown? What does that say about us, as producers, as a people?
If I’m going to shop for beef, damn straight I want to know where it’s from. Because I want to support my country, my nation and I expect nothing less from any other nation. How could I not and still be able to look myself in the mirror?
The free trade, free enterprise supporters, they’ll reassure each other in a pseudo-political circle jerk, but they’re not the ones being castrated by a thousand bureaucratic papercuts.
It seems the only way we’re permitted to try and save this industry is by dismantling that of another. How can we fight for market share with brutal trade weapons and still expect to win the heart and stomach of the consumer?
There is a chasm of disconnect between the average producer and those that toy at representing him. Somewhere between the ranch, the CCA and Ottawa, all sense and fairness becomes meaningless. And so desperate are the ranchers, they look down and away and hope for salvation in any form, even if it comes wrapped in hypocrisy.
I’d rather go down fighting for what’s right than choking on the stench we all pretended isn’t there. There’s no victory in saving an industry that has already sold its soul. |
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burnt
Rancher
Joined: 28 Feb 2008
Posts: 4249
Location: Mid-western Ontario
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| Posted: Sun Feb 14, 2010 12:39 pm Post subject: |
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Evil American producers? NO.
Small bunch of protectionists who lobby their government at any opportunity to discriminate against Canadian cattle producers who sell LIVE CATTLE, while providing opportunity for corporations who sell Canadian BEEF? YES.
Way back when the border closed, I remember putting forward that same argument you admire so much from Sheri Monk, about how we should be working together, rather than against each other. However, when I suggested it, the response was a full on attack against evil Canadian cattle producers who were, if I remember correctly, "sucking off the hind tit of the American cattleman" 
As for this remark......
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| .She was the only Canadian I know of that took R-CALF's invite to attend meetings and their convention- and found out they are just cattlemen working to better their market and industry- not the evil ogres you perceive... |
Remember last year? It's not that long ago. Members of Canada's National Farmers Union attended a similar meeting, not even one put on by RCALF, but one attended by RCALF, and guess what happened????
Next thing you know, there's a press release blasted all over the media about how the NFU agrees with RCALF, and backs them, even though it was a bold faced lie! 
All they did was be in the same room, and the Rancher's Caring About Lawyers Finances grasped at yet another straw and assumed that meant support.
You can spin it all you like, but that don't make it so.................. |
Kato - do you know how you can tell when a lawyer's lying? When his lips are moving!! 
Kato, do you know how you can tell when an rcalfer is lying??
When he's breathing. 
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RobertMac
Rancher
Joined: 10 Feb 2005
Posts: 3725
Location: Mississippi, USA
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| Posted: Sun Feb 14, 2010 5:42 pm Post subject: |
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Kato and burnt, I suggest pine trees.
Not sure if it will work for you, but after NAFTA, that's what is growing in most pastures around here instead of calves.
The Democrats and our Main Stream media perpetrated hate for Bush for eight years...now we have Obama and Chicago politics! Be careful the road your hate will lead you down.
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burnt
Rancher
Joined: 28 Feb 2008
Posts: 4249
Location: Mid-western Ontario
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PORKER
Rancher
Joined: 02 Mar 2005
Posts: 4171
Location: Michigan-Florida
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| Posted: Mon Mar 08, 2010 8:54 am Post subject: Be Careful of what YOU EAT!!!!!! |
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Canada: Is Unsafe Meat Crossing Lax Border?
by Kristeva Dowling | Mar 08, 2010
Canadians are wondering if meat from the United States is safe after learning 70 truckloads have evaded border inspections since January. That's how many truckloads the Windsor Star newspaper said had risked fines to cross the border before inspectors from the Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA) showed up for their new 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. shift times.
The new daylight only inspections began Jan. 4. The Star went public with its truck count on Feb. 19. Food entering Canada outside of those hours designated for inspection must wait until an inspector is scheduled to report for work before an inspection can take place and the truck can proceed to its destination. As a consequence, many trucks choose to ignore the regulation and pass on through to Canada with their loads.
In the U.S., every truck entering the country with food destined for its citizens' dinner plates is inspected. "In the States if you miss going to an inspection, your fine is three times the load you're carrying," said Marchuk, president of Windsor Freezer Services Ltd. Together with Border City Storage, Windsor Freezer Services is responsible for conducting the import inspections in Windsor. "Nobody skips inspections in the States because it's too risky," Marchuk concluded.
In contrast, Canadian fines are considered a joke since there is no real consequence for breaking the law.
The border inspection companies have joined New Democrat Border Critic Brian Masse--who discovered the flaw in the border inspection at Windsor, in calling on the federal government to implement stiffer penalties for long haul truckers who avoid inspection. They would like to see the Canadian policies and fines align with the US policies and ensure the Canadian public that every truck carrying meat be inspected.
Food safety has been at the forefront of Canadian minds since August of 2008, when 22 mostly elderly Canadians died during a listeria outbreak traced to the consumption of packaged deli meats made at a Maple Leaf Foods plant, despite the fact the company recalled 23 packaged meat products. Since this event, Canadians were expecting the food inspection regulations to become more stringent and effective, not to mention enforceable.
"Canada's imported meat inspection regime needs to be strengthened immediately," said Kam Rampersaud from Border City Storage Ltd. (Canada). "US producers are becoming increasingly aware of the lax inspection standards at the Canadian border," he warned.
"There is something desperately ironic about the situation where one government agency goes overboard with a regulatory regime that seemingly has nothing to do with actual food safety but that imposes enormous costs on local small abattoirs and butcher shops while at the border Canada has lost track of an estimated 70 trucks full of actual meat products selected for inspection in the last few months," said Grant Robertson, of the National Farmers Union of Canada.
Tags: Canada, import safety, imported foods, meat imports, meat inspection
03/08/2010
4:07AM All of this says nothing about the fact that even the loads that are "inspected and allowed entry" are full of beef which has been fed a diet of poultry manure. Seems so bizarre that CFIA bans the feeding of poultry manure to beef in Canada, yet totally turns a blind eye to the feces contaminated beef coming into Canada from the US. When will the consumers stand up and say Enough is Enough!
cowboss
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