EDMONTON – A Holstein cow renamed Les Miserables 2004 was brought to the Alberta legislature last week by members of the National Farmers Union to let the government know there is still hurt in the agriculture industry.
“We’ve loaded all the misery of the beef sector on the cow and rebaptized her Les Miserable 2004 to emphasize the misery out in the farm sector,” said Jon Slomp, the NFU’s co-ordinator in Alberta.
“We hope (agriculture) minister (Doug) Horner will take this cow off our hands, which will symbolize that he will take the misery off our hands and we can go home and continue to cater to our cows that are named Hope,” Slomp told about 100 people standing on the steps of the legislature Dec. 16.
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While everyone at the rally knew bringing the cow and a sheep, representing the other livestock sectors hit by BSE, wasn’t going to relieve the pressure felt by farmers, they hoped the new agriculture minister would recognize hurt is still there.
“I don’t think our government realizes how deep this crisis really is,” Slomp said.
He wants government officials to give small independent packing plants a start.
Slomp said the minister’s assistants had a difficult time finding a facility that would slaughter the animal they delivered. The meat was donated to a food bank.
After a meeting with the agriculture minister, Slomp said there was no breakthrough on changing rules to allow smaller packers to compete with the two main American-owned packing plants, but he felt the minister listened.
“I’m really happy with the new minister. Again I go home very concerned how can we move toward these solutions fast enough to keep enough farmers going to have a tomorrow.”
Slomp said the NFU does not advocate that the government pay for the producer-owned packing plants, but the government should create a level playing field to allow producers to compete against larger plants.
“The bottleneck of the problem is we have a few foreign corporations dominating and controlling this sector. Regardless of how many good plans are coming out and being exercised, they will not have a chance to survive if they are not whistled back by the referee, to allow the new plants a place in the market.”
Before BSE, Les Miserables was worth almost $1,000. Today the premium Holstein would fetch about $200.
Horner said the 45 minute meeting included discussions about increasing slaughter capacity in the province, especially for cull animals.
Horner said he’s not averse to legislation limiting something that limits ownership of cattle, but he doesn’t want to limit the number of buyers in the marketplace.
Gerd Bremmekamp, a Peers, Alta., cattle producer, heard about the rally and came to show his support. The purebred breeder had never been to the legislature before, but wanted to let the government know things aren’t all right in agriculture.
“I would like to see the government taking the whole thing more seriously,” said Bremmekamp, who would like Alberta to look at Quebec’s initiatives in which farmers are paid a floor price for their animals.
