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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: BubbaFred who wrote (109356)	8/1/2003 6:26:51 PM
From: LindyBill	Respond to of 281500

They become helpless when the normal livelihood they have taken for granted for so many years is taken away. It's too bad, but the stop on import of cattle was not political. This is such a bad illness that you just can't take chances. This cow was not brought in from America with Mad Cow. It was fed something in Canada that caused it. In any case, Canada would have done the same thing to us if the cow had been found with it here. There is no argument at the medical level about that.

To: BubbaFred who wrote (109356)	8/1/2003 6:29:34 PM
From: Ish	Respond to of 281500

<<Thanks for the correction and update on cattle prices. I have not seen the commodity charts for several years, so I did not bother checking the present prices vs a year ago.>> I used the prices as of yesterday. <<The calf found with mad cow disease was a (then) recent import (i.e. recently bought at that time) from US. >> It wasn't born with it. It's a prion that comes from using animal by products in feed. Now I don't know where the critter picked up the prion, US or Canada, but it had it. The US has laws about using animal products in animal feed and I'm guessing Canada does also. I can see why the ban was put in, people get edgy about mad cow disease. OTOH, I know of a plant that handles bad grain. Contaminated and spoiled grain that the US regulations won't let farmers feed. It gets sold to other countries who raise beef and sell it to McDonalds.

To: BubbaFred who wrote (109356)	8/1/2003 11:55:25 PM
From: aladin	Respond to of 281500

Bubba, I didn't get a chance to respond before, but will now. Your original claim on the military - was corrected by you, but is still not entirely correct. It makes the already small Canidian Military look very bad. While the Afghanistan deployment is 30% of deployable forces (corrected from your earlier claim of 30% of gross) - that is not the whole story. Canada has commitments with NATO and Norad that are separate from forces earmarked for Peacekeeping. The total for Military forces is quite differnet from those available for UN or other Peacekeeping operations. Of that portion - 30% or 1,800 are now in or are headed to Afghanistan. On the Mad Cow issue - you are repeating an unsubstantiated rumor. The cow was in Alberta for several years, it came from Saskatchewan. It origin before that was not documented by the Canadian Federal government, but is irrelevent since the scientific authorities agree that the disease was recently introduced. How recent is the debate. Canadian authorities want the introduction to be prior to 1997 because later makes it look as if their monitoring of feed was poor. But either in 1997 or more recently - it was in Canada and is a Canadian issue. The Canadian press is making much of the issue with the Japanese and Americans - but go back and look at what happened to the Japanese beef industry when they were hit with mad cow. They take this stuff pretty seriously. For the US - it sets off all kinds of alarm bells, because it could just as easily been an American incident. US feedlots use the same technologies and are taking many of the same risks as Canadians. Enforcement is key. Unfortunately - little is being done in Canada to monitor feed operations and the USDA is leary. This is sending a huge and very scary message to US producers - hence the sympathy. A better short term solution is for the Government to quit complaining and take charge. Limit the damage to Western Canada, open the east and expand regulations and inspections. The claim that the disease must have been contracted before '97 when animal byproducts in Canadian feed was outlawed - sounds self serving and is not beleived by the USDA or serious scientists elsewhere. On the lumber issue I was hoping that was settled, but alas that one is political - but is also more complicated that meets the eye. My family runs a lumber operation in Nova Scotia and they agree with the US position. The Maritime Provinces don't have the large tracks of government land to harvest - and have to pay private landowners. However as a former resident of Washington state, I saw lots of logging on US Federal land and don't quite understand the argument by Western US producers that the Candians get to buy cheap. US environmentalists make the same claim about US producers. John