So Much for Our Health, Welfare and Safety, Eh?
Isn't it wonderful that Canadians can breathe easy, knowing that our health and welfare remain topmost in the dutiful minds of our agencies set up to ensure public safety. Concerns of public health remain paramount over all other issues. Great Britain may have had its grisly issues with Creuzfeldt-Jakob disease, a result of their laxity in food safety issues, permitting animal by-products to be fed to cattle, resulting in bovine spongiform encephalitus, but we're on easy street, our health officials are right up there front and centre, on our behalf.
Since those frightening days when Canadians visiting Great Britain were disallowed from donating blood to the Red Cross because they might very well be carriers, having partaken of the British fondness for their bangers and what-have-you, our own country has had a partial ban on adding animal byproducts to feed. A partial ban, mind you, not a total ban. We can be safe, but not too safe, lest we take things too much for granted. Eh?
Bloody damn! Here's a newspaper report that the Canadian Food Inspection Agency confirmed that a hundred thousand (100,000!) cattle in Eastern Ontario and West Quebec were mistakenly (oh dear, so sorry) given feed containing animal byproducts. But, they hasten to assure, the risk of exposing humans to mad cow disease is negligible. Rest assured, eh? Why? Because they say so.
Fully one hundred and thirteen farms right in the Ottawa area had contaminated feed. Seems a rail car used to ship meat and bone meal for hog and poultry feed (what! Why the bloody hell are hog and poultry being fed meat and bone meal - same stupid, illogical, risky practise!) was later used to transport blood meal that was added to cattle feed. Oh dear, is that all there is to it? Wipe that sweat from your brow. Eh?
But everything's all right, see? The beef will be sold to Canadians, but the food inspection agency has decided to track the cattle movements so they cannot be exported. This contaminated beef is no big worry, it's all right to go ahead with butchering the cattle, processing it, sending it on to our neighbourhood supermarkets. For you and me to consume. Yum, yummy-yum. Aren't we so fond of getting more than we pay for? Don't we love a bargain?
The Canadian Food Inspection Agency is confident there will be no threat to human health through the consumption of beef which has been contaminated. The process has been clearly identified in the past; feed cattle lovely little animal by-product tid-bits and you've got a formula for disaster. So we're the experiment-at-large. Canada hasn't yet had a problem with BSE causing CJD. Stay tuned.
We've got to protect the country's bottom line. Wouldn't want any consumers outside the country, any of our trade partners, facing any problems like that, would we? Had enough of Canadian beef being constrained from crossing borders. Got to protect our markets.
Seems as though Health Canada, Agriculture Canada and the Health Protection Agency are very, very susceptible to successful lobbying. Don't want to cause unwonted hardship to too many ranchers, processing facilities after all.
Canada's got a population verging on 33 million. Some of us may be expendible. Eh?
Since those frightening days when Canadians visiting Great Britain were disallowed from donating blood to the Red Cross because they might very well be carriers, having partaken of the British fondness for their bangers and what-have-you, our own country has had a partial ban on adding animal byproducts to feed. A partial ban, mind you, not a total ban. We can be safe, but not too safe, lest we take things too much for granted. Eh?
Bloody damn! Here's a newspaper report that the Canadian Food Inspection Agency confirmed that a hundred thousand (100,000!) cattle in Eastern Ontario and West Quebec were mistakenly (oh dear, so sorry) given feed containing animal byproducts. But, they hasten to assure, the risk of exposing humans to mad cow disease is negligible. Rest assured, eh? Why? Because they say so.
Fully one hundred and thirteen farms right in the Ottawa area had contaminated feed. Seems a rail car used to ship meat and bone meal for hog and poultry feed (what! Why the bloody hell are hog and poultry being fed meat and bone meal - same stupid, illogical, risky practise!) was later used to transport blood meal that was added to cattle feed. Oh dear, is that all there is to it? Wipe that sweat from your brow. Eh?
But everything's all right, see? The beef will be sold to Canadians, but the food inspection agency has decided to track the cattle movements so they cannot be exported. This contaminated beef is no big worry, it's all right to go ahead with butchering the cattle, processing it, sending it on to our neighbourhood supermarkets. For you and me to consume. Yum, yummy-yum. Aren't we so fond of getting more than we pay for? Don't we love a bargain?
The Canadian Food Inspection Agency is confident there will be no threat to human health through the consumption of beef which has been contaminated. The process has been clearly identified in the past; feed cattle lovely little animal by-product tid-bits and you've got a formula for disaster. So we're the experiment-at-large. Canada hasn't yet had a problem with BSE causing CJD. Stay tuned.
We've got to protect the country's bottom line. Wouldn't want any consumers outside the country, any of our trade partners, facing any problems like that, would we? Had enough of Canadian beef being constrained from crossing borders. Got to protect our markets.
Seems as though Health Canada, Agriculture Canada and the Health Protection Agency are very, very susceptible to successful lobbying. Don't want to cause unwonted hardship to too many ranchers, processing facilities after all.
Canada's got a population verging on 33 million. Some of us may be expendible. Eh?
posted by Pieface | 1:40 PM
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