They are a letter combination that no one in the West wants to see: BSE, or bovine spongiform encephalopathy, more commonly in the rest of Canada, mad cow disease.
But when a case is discovered, it’s vital that cattle producers and consumers get information that is even-handed, in context and timely.
The report of a case of BSE in northern Alberta got our newsroom into action early Friday morning.
News editor Terry Fries kept in contact with our Camrose correspondent Mary MacArthur, who worked at getting the latest details.
Read Also
Sask. ag group wants strychnine back
The Agricultural Producers Association of Saskatchewan has written to the federal government asking for emergency use of strychnine to control gophers
Art director Michelle Houlden dug out our timeline of BSE that devastated the Canadian cattle industry in the early 2000s, and managing editor Michael Raine, who is in Louisville, Kentucky, reporting on the Agricultural Equipment Technology Conference, quickly sent in first reactions from the Americans.
Our cattle analyst Barbara Duck-worth got to work on the science angles of the disease and was doing interviews with other media as an expert source.
WP columnist in Ottawa, Kelsey Johnson, offers her take on page 10.
Check our website regularly at producer.com for updates, or to offer your opinions in our comment section at the bottom of the stories.
* * * * * * * *
Two new features adorn the pages of The Western Producer this week. They offer a take on two different places — where we’re going through social media, and where we’ve been, through a look back at our history.
Our online team, Paul Yanko and Robin Booker, will scour our website for the best reader online conversations at producer.com, through our Twitter feed @westernproducer or on our Facebook site at facebook.com/westernproducer. Yanko and Booker will offer their observations on these discussions in a weekly column, “Producer online.” You can find Booker’s introductory column on Page 13.
And going in the other direction, we know that readers enjoy some nostalgia now and then, so our copy editor, Bruce Dyck, will prepare a look back at events of 10, 25, 50 and 75 years ago through the pages of the Producer. We have been covering Canadian agriculture for more than 90 years, so our pages are packed with interesting history.
You can find Dyck’s first offering of “From the Archives” on Page 25. If you have any interesting old photos, be sure to email them to Dyck, who can share them with our readers.
