MORAL ISSUES UNCHANGED
Re: Researchers gather welfare data at rodeo (WP, July 17).
The most interesting aspect of Dr. Ed Pajor’s research into the welfare of bucking animals at the Calgary Stampede is that it focuses exclusively on the animals’ experience before and after they perform. ‘As we, and much of the public, are mainly concerned with the animals’ welfare while performing in the arena, this puzzles us. It’s the animals’ distress during the actual event that raises the most concern about welfare. Does anyone seriously believe that once the cinch strap is tightened and the horse or bull starts bucking that it is not experiencing stress?
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We welcome scientific research initiatives into rodeo animal welfare but we abhor the public relations misuse of such research. The Calgary Stampede has used such initiatives to cloud animal welfare issues, not to clarify them. The media is dazzled by the application of technology and the public is left with the impression that science is resolving any welfare problems. Yet, the animals continue to be exposed to exactly the same fear, stress and pain. The moral issues remain the same.
Peter Fricker, Projects and
Communications Director,
Vancouver Humane Society,
Vancouver, B.C.
Protections
We have a major problem: we are surrounded by a sea of conventional farmers and a major oil patch. There are emissions from the Husky Refinery, the rapeseed plant and the Husky Upgrader plus thousands of vehicles of every size. This year for the first time there are few apples on my crabapple tree and none on the mountain ash. Over the years I have watched as the pollinators have diminished year by year until this year, I saw none at all. As a result the trees are bare of fruit. The city sprays for cosmetic purposes. Could any self-respecting bee exist in this atmosphere?
Under these circumstances is it any wonder that only the very old have the luxury of dying of old age, the rest succumb to one affliction or another before their time. Does no one care about the future generations yet unborn, or even their own grandchildren? Why do we allow the chemical companies to control our very existence.? They didn’t until after World War Two.
Jean Sloan,
Lloydminster, Sask.
CONFIRMING MY BELIEF
“Confirmation bias” — to gather information to confirm existing beliefs.
To judge if a business is good is based on money, whether it makes us more or saves us more. That is how we should look at our grain handling system. There are farmers on both sides of the fence about the old Canadian Wheat Board.
Some complain about grain movement this past winter. In 1996-97 CN and CP could make more money moving things other than grain. On behalf of farmers, the old CWB filed a level of service complaint. CN paid voluntarily, CP went to court and paid a hefty fine. They never pulled that trick again until last winter when there was no old CWB to contend with.
One expense we are saddled with is demurrage: $15,000 to $25,000 per day per ship. Barring a heavy rain, the old CWB could get a ship on its way in four days. This year it took 65 days for one 55,000 tonne ship to be on its way. The old CWB knew when ships were going to arrive so sourced the proper grain from country elevators. Just in time it would be in Vancouver, cleaned and ready to load when the ships arrived. This year, at one time there were over 50 ships anchored, waiting. This cost, probably more than $1 million a day, is passed along to farmers in what is called “the basis”. Basis is the money grain companies charge farmers to cover their cost of selling grain.
There are many other examples of expenses included in the basis. Now, the bigger basis is why farmers are getting less of the export price than the 80 percent they used to get with the old CWB.
I have not seen any numbers showing an economic benefit to the farming community due to the current system.
Because of the huge increase in the basis charged for selling wheat, if I conclude the old grain marketing system was better than the new, can I be accused of confirmation bias?
Lorne Jackson,
WHO CALLS THE SHOTS?
What is UPOV 91 – Bill C-18?
The Agricultural Growth Act is an omnibus bill introduced on Dec. 9, 2013. Omnibus bills amend many pieces of legislation at once, often on unrelated matters. Omnibus bills make it impossible to fully examine each proposed change. Under C-18, plant breeders’ rights apply to newly bred varieties that are essentially derived from PBR-protected varieties, allowing plant breeders to exercise control over the results of future plant breeding.
Bill C-18 allows for collection of end-point royalties (EPR) if royalties are not first collected on seed. An EPR system would require compulsory payments by farmers to the plant breeder upon sale of a crop grown from a PBR-protected variety. The main beneficiaries of C-18 would thus be private breeders, including the large companies that dominate the global seed industry: Monsanto, DuPont, Pioneer, Syngenta, Limagrain, Land O Lakes, KWS, Bayer Cropscience and Dow AgroSciences. Farmers would be at the mercy of these multinationals.
With this information, at the February 2014 SARM (Saskatchewan Association of Rural Municipalities) annual convention, delegates voted strongly in favour of the following: Resolution No 12 — 14A, RM of Emerald No 277 — UPOV 91 “Whereas adoption of UPOV 91 will reduce the freedom and rights of Canadian farmers, increase production costs, lower income margins and hurt farmer independence; be it resolved that SARM lobby the provincial government to use their influence with the federal government to remove this section from the Agriculture Growth Act.”
Yet, on April 23 SARM sent out a letter to all reeves, councillors and administrators that contained a statement from Saskatchewan Ministry of Agriculture promoting UPOV 91.
If Bill C-18 passes there will be negative consequences for farmers regardless of how they obtain their seed. C-18 would result in increased seed costs due to higher royalties on more varieties. Seed companies could/would de-register varieties currently in the public domain —royalty-free seed — reducing farmers’ choice of seed and pushing them to use more expensive seed protected by Plant Breeders’ Rights.
So, who calls the shots at SARM, delegates or the Sask. Party?
Joyce Neufeld,
Waldeck, Sask.
CONSEQUENCES
I am afraid that I have found Kevin Hursh’s latest rant (column, WP July 17) against environmentalists and all they stand for as having gone too far.
Kevin states, “The anti-science crowd that denies the safety of the science behind GM crops are often the same people that say science is on their side regarding climate change.”
Sorry Kevin, but environmentalist-minded people, including me, are worried about the future of this planet and what kind of world we are leaving our children and grandchildren. Being opposed to the bending of science in order to serve the greed of giant corporations and their profit margins is not being anti-science.
The genetic modification of our food crops is not being done for the benefit of consumers or farmers. Along with Bill C-18, it is clearly part of a scheme to create a new kind of serfdom for farmers whereby they are locked into a web of licences, fees and regulations that gives corporations complete control from seed to crop management to harvest and even to whom farmers sell.
In fact, it is the corporations and their journalistic spokespersons that are being hypocritical when they change sides and deny the science of climate change.
Using selective ups and downs in the weather as Kevin Hursh does is not scientific either. Scientists have things like the Greenland ice cores, tree rings and a multitude of geological evidence to establish climate fluctuations over millions of years. The present disappearances of polar ice, accelerated species extinctions and the acidification of the oceans are not normal. It is clearly man-made carbon pollution that makes the present unusual and threatening, and therefore preventable.
Environmentalists are trying to do just that by opposing new pipelines and oil by rail.
Curb the carbon or face the consequences.
Tom Shelstad,
Swift Current, Sask.
