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Cattle policy pure madness

It doesn't take an expert to figure out critter cannibalism must end



By Licia Corbella

Columnist

The Calgary Sun

July 9, 2006

Canada



What, pray tell, do we pay our government experts for?



After all, three years ago, after a few days of intensive research, I came to a rather obvious conclusion that there was one way -- and only one way -- to ensure that Canada wouldn't keep on producing mad cows -- that is cows with bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE).



How did I propose to do that?



By completely banning all animal protein from entering livestock feed.



Period.



No exceptions.



Last month, Canada took one more baby step towards such a ban, but really still has a long way to go before it does the right thing and turns Canada's cattle into herbivores again rather than meat eaters -- and in many cases cannibals.



On June 26, the Canadian Food Inspection Agency announced that it will ban the use of so-called "specified risk material" such as the brain, spinal cord and eyeballs from all livestock feed as of July 12, 2007.



It's frankly, an outrageous delay to protect our food source and an important multi-billion dollar industry.



Currently, our pigs and chickens are eating cows and our cows are eating pigs and chickens even though they're all supposed to be herbivores.



It's a disgusting practice made all the worse since it's known the feed often gets mixed up, turning all of those consumable animals into cannibals.



Just this past Tuesday, federal officials confirmed a 15-year-old cow from near Gimli, Man. was infected with mad cow disease, making it the country's sixth case since the first Alberta case was discovered in 2003.



But if Canada had followed the lead of Britain -- which caused mad cow disease to begin with -- Canada most likely wouldn't have had ANY mad cows at all and countless ranchers and feedlot operators wouldn't have gone bankrupt after the U.S. border and borders around the world were slammed shut to our beef when an Alberta-born cow was discovered with the dreaded disease on May 20, 2003.



In July 1988, Britain banned the practice of turning cows into cannibals by imposing a ruminant-to-ruminant feed ban, which means all animals with four stomachs, such as sheep, cows and elk -- herbivores all -- weren't allowed to eat one and other any more.



The U.S. and Canada waited another nine long years until 1997 to follow suit.



And guess what?



This latest mad cow was born in 1991, three years after the Brits banned cattle cannibalism (a practice they started).



While it's not fair to compare Canada's fabulous beef industry with Britain's abysmal one, surely our experts could have and should have gleaned some important information from the disaster that occurred there and throughout Europe as a result of the grotesque practice of feeding Bessy the cow to Bart the bull and Bart the bull to Bessy and so on.



In total, some 183,000 British cows were infected with BSE.



Nevertheless, despite the ruminant-to-ruminant feed ban, more than 43,000 of those infected cows were born AFTER July 1988.



If it's true BSE can't be spread from cow to cow and only either at birth or through its feed, then what was happening?



Experts say it's safe to assume that many of those 43,000 cattle were infected by what they were eating.



Clearly, cattle cannibalism hadn't stopped, despite the limited feed ban.



So, were British farmers defying the ruminant-to-ruminant ban?



Yes, though not necessarily intentionally.



Those cruddy cattle parts -- like the eyeballs, brains and spinal columns, called specified risk materials (SRMs)-- were now finding their way into chicken and pig feed and that feed was finding its way back to Bessy the cow and Bart the bull.



The Brits finally figured it out and in August 1996, the government there imposed a feed ban that completely prohibited cattle and sheep parts from being rendered into ANY kind of feed.



And Canada is only planning on banning SRMs from livestock feed in July 2007?



It makes no sense.



Several years ago I interviewed Dr. Connie Argue, veterinary program specialist for the Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA) who said after the first mad cow was discovered in Alberta in May, the CFIA "scrutinized" 200 Canadian farms and found three farms where cattle were found inadvertently eating their own kind when they broke into bags destined for pigs and chickens instead.



That's 1.5%.



Recognizing the risk of exactly that happening, in 2001 the European Union banned all cattle, chicken AND pig protein from the feed market altogether. Cows in Europe are herbivores again!



Imagine that?



The answer to this problem is simple.



Why are we trying to reinvent the wheel when the answer is so obvious?



Cattle and other ruminant protein should not be finding its way into ANY feed for any animal or fertilizer because history proves it is inevitably fed back to cows.



If a lay person like me could figure that out way back in July 2003, why has it taken our government experts another three years to come to the same conclusion?



And why are we waiting another year to implement the ban?



What do we pay these experts for?





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