It was only a matter of time, and everyone on this side of the border knew it.Second Mad Cow Disease case found in U.S. - not likely to be linked to imported Canadian cow.
Gee, I hope your biggest trading partner doesn’t slam their borders shut and not even consider trading with you for multiple years, destroying hundreds of small farms and ranches along the way.
If there’s any good to come from the U.S. devastating the Canadian beef market, it will be that we’ve learned a damned good lesson from it.
Well, I spent a great deal of time in Alberta the summer the first cow was found. Talked to a lot of the ranchers there, and they sure were not happy. I on the other hand was eating steaks like there was no tomorrow and was very happy. That Alberta beef is some good tasting meat.
Be that as it may, that might be hopeful posturing on the pols part. I’d love to see the Alberta folks get a break, the were mighty nice to me. But it seems like the best policy would be to stop feeding cows the by-products of their brethern, no matter where they live. Grain and grass people, it’s what they were designed for.
Just grass, actually. Grain-feeding makes for nice, fatty meat, but it ain’t what they were “designed” for – a high grain diet has a number of negative health consequences for cattle. (None of which are anywhere near as concerning as that whole contagious porous brain thing, of course.)
Bovine Spongiform Encephalitis does occur naturely, so I was always concerned about how the US handled the Canadian outbreak, since it was only a matter of time until one of our own came down with it.
Who’d a thunk that our current government acted rashly and lacked foresight?
Mostly, but not entirely. It’s legal to feed cow parts to chickens, and chickens are sloppy eaters. It’s legal to mix chicken house floor sweepings in with cattle food. Now, the odds of getting diseased cattle byproducts to and back from the chicken house are incredibly slim, but the risk is there.
The animal in question could not walk, and the new regs say you can’t butcher a cow that can’t walk. So, no part of the beast entered the human food chain. After a brain sample was taken, the rest was incinerated.
Y’know, the U.S. government has been demanding that the Japanese government lift their ban on U.S. beef for months, now. There was some speculation that it might happen, but I guess that the window on that has slammed shut again.
And when I say “demanding,” I mean to imply “bullying” and “posturing” as well. The clips on the news of American officials repeating their demands have been, well, enlightening. I guess that Japan was one of the biggest customers for U.S. beef. Now, most beef imports to Japan are from Australia.
Since this is the Pit, I’m going to do a little schadenfreude dance for the upcoming destruction of the beef industry. I’m glad Nature has finally told all those corporate farming interests that their focus on the bottom line at the expense of living beings involved is FUCKED. This is what you get when you screw with an animal beyond recognition as the beef industry has done with the cow (not to mention the other animals it has ruthlessly driven from their habitats so that they can graze their mutant, drugged, cannibalistic cattle on public land). Looks like they’ve finally gone too far. In my heart of hearts, I hope the whole industry goes down in flames and eating beef becomes a thing of the past. Yeah, I know, fat chance, but a girl can dream, can’t she?
Fuck you, Rubystreak. No, wait a minute. I wouldn’t fuck you with the dick of the horse you rode in here on…oh, wait, I guess you wouldn’t ride a horse…
…Fine, fuck you up the ass with an encephalitic bull dick…then break it off and leave it there…
Damn. You know, the people that rail against the meat industries…I grew up in ranch country, and I just can’t abide you types…
fuck.
fuckity, fuck, fuck, fuck…
It’s the pit, so I’ll say that the OP is a horrible, mean-spirited cunt, with an agenda or two besides the intracacies of the beef industry. Really, on who would wish harm on honest-working ranchers. But, OP-cunt aside, It’s nice to know that things have finally shaped up in the beef industry, and I hope that we can all open our borders soon, provided testing at the level of the US and Japan is verifiable and open.
I don’t wish bankrupcy on any farmer making an honest living, of course, but it’s the pit and we have a confrontational OP, so there we are.
The OP has seen numerous friends driven into bankruptcy by the policies advocated by US ranchers, so I’m apt to cut her a fair bit of slack. From the time of the first positive test in Alberta, anyone with an ounce of sense has known that, integrated as the herds are, what’s on our side of the border is also on your side of the border. Instead of adopting a cooperative strategy to convince other countries to adopt rational, science-based policies on BSE, the US chose time and time again to extend the ban on Canadian beef imports, which in addition to being massively detrimental to Canadian ranchers and the US meat packing industry, has hurt the Americans’ own case to get Japan, S Korea, etc., to reopen their borders. This latest case confirms what the Canadian beef industry has been saying for two years, and the OP is expressing a little happiness over it. She doesn’t even wish any harm on the US beef industry, instead merely sarcastically noting that the US has devastated our beef industry for precisely the same thing.
Indeed, I think most of the fist pumps and schadenfreude up here are coming from people within in the beef industry. I know I’ve been waiting for this to happen. Quite frankly, the damage is already done to us.
If I understood the NPR report correctly, it is unknown whether this cow bred or not. The entire herd is to be tested, if all if it can be found. Fine, it itself didn’t get butchered and end up as a burger–but it did not live in a vacuum.
I see no reason to be complimentary/supportive towards the USDA here–they insisted on ONE “gold standard” test, instead of 2, which is normal operationg procedure in UK and I believe, in Canada.
I think that many, many small American farmers are gonna get screwed, and the big conglomerates (who can take the financial hit) are not. I pity the small rancher, but want the Beef Industry to clean up its act.