RED DEER – Lee Davis raised his cap to reveal a head of grey hair as a symbol of the Canadian cattle rancher.
Too old, too tired and too broke summed up his feelings at a BSE rally held in Red Deer March 31.
“Who cares anymore? You look around the room and the meetings I have been to, everybody has got grey hair like I have. We’re not going nowhere except to the grave,” said the beef producer from Niton Junction near Mayerthorpe, Alta.
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And just as Davis is getting older, his cow herd is aging too. There is no profit in adding replacement animals to rebuild the herd., he said.
The rally was organized to raise interest in a BSE class action lawsuit, which claims government actions going back to 1990 led to the occurrence of BSE in Canada.
Toronto-based lawyer Cameron Pallett, representing the plaintiffs, claims producers have lost as much as $1.5 billion a year since 2003 when the first domestic case was reported.
Pallett said a trial is expected in four years. The outcome would be appealed so a settlement may not come for 10 years. Originally, multinational feed manufacturer Ridley Inc. was included in the lawsuit, but the company settled for $6 million with the money going to help fund the case.
About 100 people turned out for the rally. Many agreed they would welcome a judicial review and a settlement rather than waiting 10 years and were urged by organizers to start a letter writing campaign to their elected representatives.
Rally organizer Randy Kaiser of Ponoka, Alta., wants people to push for a settlement and expects similar rallies in other provinces. He blames poor morale for the apparent apathy among producers and the smaller than expected crowd.
“Too many guys have just given up,” he said in an interview.
Pallett’s description of the case alleges the federal government was negligent starting in 1990. BSE had been identified in Great Britain in 1986 when thousands of animals developed a fatal nervous disorder linked to feed containing meat and bone meal derived from infected cattle.
In 1990, the Canadian government banned British imports to prevent the spread of BSE into Canada. Canadian officials placed about 200 British cattle that had arrived in the country since 1982 into a monitoring program because the disease has a five to six year incubation period.
The theory is that an infected animal from the group was rendered and material ended up in feed.
“All they had to do was prevent these cows from being ground up and turned into calf starter. It was a simple task. All they had to do was catalogue them and find out where they are and keep them from getting into the food supply,” said Pallett.
