Canola facts
Re: “Speakers lambaste canola misinformation,” WP, April 1.
There are a couple of nagging points in this article which need to be corrected.
Suresh Narine questioned the nutritional claim, made by convention speaker Dr. Theresa Nicklas, that canola oil contains vitamin E. He said that canola oil contains little vitamin E since most is removed in the refining process.
In fact, refined canola oil does contain significant and beneficial levels of vitamin E, about one-fifth the daily requirement for an adult male per 10 millilitre serving.
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Suresh Narine questioned the recommendation, made by convention speaker Dr. Curtis Ellison, that people should eat canola-based margarine. Suresh indicated that getting rid of trans fats doesn’t necessarily make the product healthy, and that “the problem is saturates are as dangerous as trans fats.” Suresh said that even margarine made from the new line of high stability canola oil contains harmful ingredients.
In fact, while both saturates and trans fats are bad, health and nutrition professionals generally regard trans fats to be worse than saturates. The benefit of the new high stability canola oils is that they allow margarine manufacturers to replace some of the hydrogenated (trans fat) oils with this new canola oil, which does not contain trans fats.
The point that Dr. Ellison was making was that if you are going to eat margarine, a solid fat which admittedly is not as healthy as liquid canola oil, then you might as well eat a healthier type of margarine based on high stability canola oil.
People consume oil and fat in many different forms: meat, milk, cheese, butter, margarine, shortening, liquid oil, etc. Consumers need healthier options within these food categories.
– Dave Hickling,
Vice-President, Canola Utilization,
Canola Council of Canada,
Winnipeg, Man.
Everyone watching
There are times when cows are the devil’s blight on a Christian’s soul; those times when nothing seems to go right and it seems as though the cattle are conspiring to remove what little faith there might be left in a sensible man’s heart.
Waiting until the coldest, darkest night to deliver a new calf and then abandoning that little wet creature to return to the herd and the feed trough. …
And then there are times when faith is renewed by those same beasts; those times when a cow lays down and delivers a good strong calf and then jumps right up and tends to its very first needs, licking him clean and talking those mono-syllabic mama cow sounds urging that little one to his feet. Guiding those first wobbly steps to her warm flank…
This scene seems so very far removed from the trade disputes, the worries about disease, and those few who think that our dominion over the cow is cruel and unjust.
We Canadian cattlemen and women are stewards of our creatures and share a stubborn pride about our industry. We are capitalists and free enterprisers to a fault. We resist marketing boards and supply management. We also are reluctant to ask for help.
So now that there is some assistance available, we should consider whether this might just prolong the inevitable. We might have to get our heads around the concept that we might have to reduce our herds and take our lumps. …
Ask yourself if you’ve done fairly well in cattle whether squeezing that last few dollars out of a lame or lump-jaw or cancer-eye or emaciated cow helped your bottom line enough to erase the shame of having your name on her manifest.
And there should be shame. The days ahead in the cattle business will be those of justification. We will have to justify and prove ourselves worthy participants in the world beef market by setting standards for others to follow. …
If there’s one thing left, it is hope – hope that trade will resume with our neighbours, hope that we’ll discover causes and remedies to diseases that challenge our herd health, and hope that if we keep hanging onto that old cow’s tail, she’ll pull us through like so many times before.
– Morgan Wilson,
Nanton, Alta.
Good water
…Residents of Yellowquill First Nations in east-central Saskatchewan can, after nine years and $6 million, finally drink the water straight out of the tap. In 1995, because E. coli and coliform bacteria, normally found in human and animal waste, had contaminated their drinking water, the government put a boil water order on their water. In fact, chief Robert Whitehead believes this unsafe drinking water may have caused the high incidence of diabetes, cancer and other illnesses suffered by his people.
Boil water orders are easy and cheap to place, but they don’t prevent future problems nor do they fix the current ones.
How many Saskatchewan communities have boil water orders on their water supplies today? And, if the government continues to issue operating permits to more pig factories, how many Saskatchewan communities will have boil water orders placed on their drinking water in the future?
Without an independent environmental assessment on each operation, we have no way of knowing how our health and environment are threatened by the millions of gallons of liquid hog manure produced by these animals. … We don’t know how long any of these negative impacts will take before they begin to affect us.
Why do pig factories still get permits? What is the trade-off value between pigs and people? Isn’t it better to be safe than to be sorry?
…The World Health Organization, the Canadian Medical Association and the Canadian Public Health Association have adopted (the) precautionary principle in their calls for moratoria on the expansion of pig factories. They understand that when an activity raises threats of harm to human health or the environment, precautionary measures should be taken and you just don’t do it. What part of no is so difficult to understand? …
– Elaine Hughes,
Archerwill, Sask.
Seeking problem?
The (avian) flu in B.C. is an interesting example of how you will not find a problem unless you go looking for it. It is interesting to note that one million cattle have consumed 400 million provincial taxpayer dollars at an average cost of $400 per carcass and few BSE tests on the currently discarded brain and spinal cord have been conducted.
Is this because the Klein government was afraid to discover the contaminated cattle feed was not completely consumed by two separate bovines or restricted to two separate farms? Will Ralph be around to take responsibility if, 10 years from yesterday, some Alberta children become ill with the human form of BSE?
Alberta’s No. 2 export destination is Japan with 2.41 percent of our exports. The third largest export (after natural gas and oil ) is “cuts of beef, boneless, fresh/chilled” at 2.42 percent.
Live cattle are only 1.29 percent of total exports. These statistics are for 2002 …. The agriculture minister should be spending our money, time and energy on BSE testing and attempting to capture Japan’s confidence and the U.S.’s largest beef export market.
I know, I know – shoot, shovel and shut up.
– Don McGregor,
Edmonton, Alta.
