When the mad- cow crisis struck last year, I had faith that our industrious Canadian ranchers would find a way to turn this tragedy into an opportunity. Despite some government bungling, many are doing just that.
Much of the bungling has come from the insulting way Klein and company (and to an extent, the federal government) have been running the mad-cow public relations campaign.
Most of us know a fair bit about how bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) spreads. And if we didn’t before, we learned fast. So, when Klein told us that it was just “one sick cow,” we knew he was taking a big risk. The single case may have been the tip of an iceberg.
Unfortunately, Klein lost that gamble. He was at least 100- per-cent wrong: There were, at a minimum, two mad cows that likely ate infected feed while in Alberta.
So the premier changed tack.
Today the PR line, as you will undoubtedly recognize, is that Canada is on the side of “science,” whereas the Japanese – and anyone who rejects Canada’s cattle – are not.
The new PR line is almost as transparent as the last one.
Japan, rejecting our protocols, tests every single animal at slaughter, no matter how young, using a much more sensitive test than we use in Canada.
When Japan found a 23-month-old mad cow last year, officials here dismissed it as a “near-positive” or “false-positive,” owning to the extra-sensitivity of the Japanese test. It would have been negative here, they said.
I tend to side with Japan in wanting to play it safe.
Canadian officials tell us that no animal under 30 months of age needs testing. But there is little difference between a 29-month-old and a 30-month old cow. Plus, in the two cases of Alberta-borne BSE, the age of the animals were disputed extensively.
While “science” says young animals need no testing, common sense says the age of an animal can be manipulated or mistaken.
That’s just one reason why this “scientific” argument is limited. Science has never been able to overcome human foibles. The second argument is that our health scientists have to be economists, too. And if ever there were an inexact science, it is economics.
This was evident last week when the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) denied a request by Creekstone Farms in Kansas to test 100 per cent of their slaughtered cattle using the same intense protocol used by the Japanese. The reason for the USDA prohibition, according to news reports, was that the tests would have been a complete waste of time and money. Officials feared setting an expensive precedent for an illusory benefit just to appease the Japanese.
But who is to judge what markets demand? One official said Japan’s system is analogous to screening babies for Alzheimer’s disease. But I fail to see how that can be dangerous to our food supply.
This disease illustrates my third objection to the PR campaign: Even great scientists in the hard sciences are not all-knowing.
Dr. Murray Waldman (a prominent Canadian scientist) and Marjorie Lamb have recently published Dying for a Hamburger, a book in which they posit that India (where few cows are eaten because of their sacred status to Hindus) might hold a clue to the sudden appearance and explosion of Alzheimer’s that western countries have seen over the past 100 years.
Waldman thinks meat- processing practices, such as mixing meat from thousands of cattle in one batch of hamburgers, might be a mistake.
He admits that the link is not proven, but it might be worth investigating.
Many reputable scientists doubt Waldman’s premise. But that does not change the fact that knowledgeable scientists can disagree on food safety issues.
Which brings me back to the amazing farmers of Canada.
Co-operative packing plants are sprouting up in at least four locations in Western Canada, as ranchers worry that the large American-owned meat packers may be giving them short shrift through this mad cow crisis.
The Canadian ranchers’ pain is becoming a catalyst for innovation and change.
One initiative, called the Peace Country Tender Beef Co-op, wants bar-codes on each package so consumers can trace every cut back to the originating farm.
The co-ops are addressing Waldman’s concern about “batching” by proposing that each hamburger will come from one cow. They are also pursuing on-site labs to test every animal, as is done in Japan.
These are risky initiatives, and they may or may not make meat safer.
But they undoubtedly will make the marketplace more variable and the options for consumers more exciting.
Let the CFIA take note: they won’t make it worse.
