IT’S THE same stuff, different year when it comes to political rhetoric concerning American perceptions about Canadian beef safety.
Over the holiday season, U.S. senators Byron Dorgan and Mike Enzi published a guest opinion in many newspapers. In it they called for the rollback of the United States Department of Agriculture rule, known as Rule 2, which came into force Nov 19, 2007. It allows the import of younger Canadian cattle and of beef from cattle of all ages by the United States.
Their joint comment is more interesting for the substance it lacks than any it contains.
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The senators note Canada’s 12 cases of BSE (they count Canada’s 11 plus one U.S. case traced to a Canadian source). The number is a sign of “higher-risk beef,” say the senators.
Never mentioned are the two indigenous U.S. cases of BSE, found in June 2005 in a Texas cow and in March 2006 in an Alabama animal. These cases are apparently best ignored by politicians when making assertions about safety of the U.S. food supply.
Never mentioned either is Canada’s system designed to test animals at highest risk of having BSE, which by any rational assessment will result in a higher number of cases discovered along the road to eradication.
In contrast, the U.S. system is based on random tests on cattle of all ages, with no compensation or other incentive offered to those who have high-risk or suspect animals that could be tested.
“In recent months, American consumers have come face to face with the reality that food products from other nations can be tainted and diseased,” wrote the senators. “We want the USDA to take seriously its responsibility to keep unsafe meat from crossing our borders…”
Never mentioned are Canada’s regulations for removal of specified risk materials from all beef, designed to further reduce the risk that meat from BSE-infected animals would enter the food chain. The U.S. has no similar regulations, nor any comprehensive traceback program, as Canada does, should disease be discovered.
But all of these comparisons are rendered moot by one fact: there has been no increase in North America in reported cases of Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease, the human equivalent of BSE that scientists believe is caused by eating BSE-infected meat. If the meat supply was as rife with BSE as detractors imply, this would be difficult to explain.
For the senators, it plays well to the masses to praise domestic beef safety and attempt to restrict imports. And it’s easier than improving domestic food safety measures that lead to health issues far more common than BSE – bacterial contamination such as E. coli and salmonella. Recent incidents of such contamination, in the U.S. and elsewhere, are the main reason for consumers’ diminishing confidence in food safety.
Persistent attempts to limit Canadian beef trade due to the imagined spread of BSE spread may be doing more harm than good to that level of confidence. The senators need to think about that.
Bruce Dyck, Terry Fries, Barb Glen, D’Arce McMillan and Ken Zacharias collaborate in the writing of Western Producer editorials.
