When Canada’s 2,500 hungry soldiers in Afghanistan sit down for a beef dinner after a day of patrolling, the steak on their plate is more likely to have come from Texas than Alberta.
That bugs one Alberta Conservative MP who has worked to support the Canadian cattle industry through the income and marketing crisis launched by the BSE cow in Alberta.
In September, Peter Goldring from the Edmonton Centre-East constituency helped organize a cattle drive to Parliament Hill to publicize the plight of farmers and ranchers unable to sell product into export markets.
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On Jan. 30, he was wondering aloud why the armed forces were not making sure their beef was Canadian, both to help industry sales and to promote the Canadian product.
“What better place to advertise Canadian beef than to have our troops sit down beside their American colleagues and to offer them some good Canadian beef,” Goldring said in an interview.
“I certainly think we should require that Canadian beef be used to feed our troops. I’d think our boys over there would like to chow down on some real Alberta beef.”
The Department of National Defence says it has an explanation.
The company subcontracted by DND to supply provisions to Canadian troops found a better deal with an American supplier than a Canadian supplier.
“Whenever possible we try to use Canadian beef but the reality of the difficulties of getting it to a theatre like Afghanistan sometimes makes it impractical,” DND official Jeremy Sales said in an interview.
In mess halls on bases across Canada and on Canadian ships, 90 percent or more of the beef is Canadian, he said.
However, at camps abroad like Afghanistan and Bosnia, contractors are told to find quality beef supplies as cheaply as possible in one of eight countries – Canada, the United States, Australia, New Zealand, Argentina, Brazil, Chile and Uruguay.
“It then becomes a competitive bidding process and Canadian suppliers do not always win,” said Sales. “Ideally, we’d love to have Canadian suppliers always win.”
The American beef to Canadian troops story surfaced when the supplier decided that import restrictions imposed on American beef by the Canadian Food Inspection Agency after BSE was found in Washington state applied to the American beef he had stored in Kabul for Canadian troops. Canadian Forces leaders ordered the beef quarantined until the issue was cleared up.
On Jan. 29, the forces announced that the beef had been cleared and the ban lifted.
Goldring complained that by overreacting, Canada was sending a message to the U.S. that the post-BSE ban on Canadian beef into the American market was justified.
