Grrrrr

[15444]

Ivbinconned:

Canada is allowed 15 animals until we lose our 'limited risk state.' If we aren't testing by then, what happens to our consumer confidence?

Kato: I agree. As far as I have ever heard, Japan has said right from the start that it will begin importing Canadian beef once we adapt their practice of universal testing. But we have too many bureacrats that are whipping boys for the Americans. No need to apologize for swearing. Your a beef producer in Canada, you have a right!

[ALICIA]

15444- I'm geeting dam sick of hearing us hobby farmers are the only ones that don't what our beef tested. Is there some limit on how much money each farmer looses before he is considered a farmer. Well I'll just tell you one thing if I'm a hobby farmer, I work dam hard at it besided doing a 8 hr job. So I do 2 jobs and you do l. I'd say I'm a better man then you are and when this is over I hope you are still above water because I know that I will be. Have a good day.

[15444]

Alicia,

Not everybody that has another job or two is labelled as a hobby farmer. Two kinds of people fall into this catagory.

1. People who have 15-20 cows or less and hold off farm jobs so they can play cowboy (This is really popular in Southern Ontario) and then whine as though it really hurts them when something like BSE hits.

2. Guys who own high end jobs so they can own a nice little ranch with 200 or so cows so they can run around in cowboy hats with modern stables and pretty $10,000 horses and half a dozen farm hands. (I know a few big purebred guys who had this mindset).

So if you are somewhere in between these two extremes Alicia, my distaste for these types of people is not directed towards you. As far as I am concerned, the way a person can personally judge if they are a 'true' farmer is look at the current beef situation. If the border doesn't open up within the next year, do you face losing all of your hopes and dreams that you have strived for in all these years? will you lose your love for the farm and for that which you produce?....If you answer yes to both of these, then say your a FARMER loud and clear for all to hear! I don't know how many true farmers that can keep on going when all the inputs for farming keep rising and the bottom starts to fall out!

[grassfarmer]

Kato, "Japan has always said it would import our beef if we tested it" did they? or was it "we won't consider buying any beef unless it is tested" there is a difference. Japan is one of the most protectionist countries in the world and prior to the US case of BSE was trying to apply additional import tariffs on US beef in an attempt to bolster their own beef producers incomes. They don't need much of an excuse to exclude our beef. Besides what are we talking about testing to appease the Japanese? will they buy over 30 month animals? If it is only under that age why bother testing as the tests will be negative anyway. Yes, they are a really scientific lot the Japanese - testing everything for BSE and still feeding meat and bone meal as far as I know.

[cowman]

Grassfarmer: The Japanese have achieved consumer confidence through their testing. Now whether their product is safer or not I don't know but they have sold this idea to the consumer. Consider this: They don't have to be bothered with all the extra expense of removing brains, spinal cord lower intestine. They don't have to worry about keeping waste separate when rendering. So what has happened is it's business as usual except for taking a sample to test. If you find a positive you pull it out of the cooler and dispose of it. I believe they have found 9 animals so far so that is 9 out of 1.2 million? It would seem to me $30/animal might be cheaper than going to all the trouble of removing SRMs and disposing of them?

[raymondb]

Right on the mark Cowman and you have not even put the losses we are experiencing today for all cattle because all prices are down and we are feeding a bunch of animals that should be culled and would have been in the marketplace.There just has to be less beef consumed globally now that the USA and Canada both have had a BSE case in the past few months or were there a bunch of freezers full of beef that are now being emptied.

My definition of a farmer does not exclude the very few who are fortunate and have enough resourses to weather the disasters we experience.

[grassfarmer]

I use 15444s quote from above "Canada is allowed 15 animals until we lose our 'limited risk state.' If we aren't testing by then, what happens to our consumer confidence?"
Japan has had 9 cases (in a fraction of the size of cowherd) thus far and is taking no precautions to prevent it what happens when they hit the magic 15 number??
I feel they are playing a more dangerous game, trying to fool their consumers and ultimately it could cost them dearly.

[cowman]

Grassfarmer: What happens when the Japanese do hit 15? Why should they care? How much do they export? The whole thing becomes academic because they now have, supposedly, safe beef.
Consider our situation. We sort of test...we get 15...we are toast! We don't test...we play the old 3S game...and maybe we pull it off? Or maybe we take it to the Japanese level...we test everything...and we declare that no matter how many positives we have all the beef entering the food chain is safe!!!
Who can argue with that? All the silly protocols go out the window because all the known science then says our beef is totally safe???
Does this make any sense?

[grassfarmer]

Cowman, You claim if we test (all?) our cattle "all the known science then says our beef is totally safe" We have already acomplished that by removing specified offals from the carcases. Removing all these materials seems to me a far better way to protect consumers than allow the high risk materials to be consumed.
"Why should they (Japanese) care ?" - According to earlier posts on this thread consumer confidence was what it was all about.

[ALICIA]

Bottom line is if we do not test every thing, their will be some that will get into the food chain.
And I have heard that the prons are in the blood, well blood goes to all parts of the body.
So we either make the beef safe of we just test some and hope one doesn't enter the food chain.
Plus most customers of beef is not buying the story of only testing some, it has to be all or we will loose more than we all ready have.

[kato]

Only testing a few is like playing Russian Roulette. I don't know about anyone else, but around our farm, we've just about had enough of this roller coaster ride. As soon as things start looking up, down we go again.

It's not like the testing is going to go on forever, either. If the science about the feed ban is correct, as soon as the generation of cattle that were alive before the feed ban have died off, the problem should go away on it's own.

If it doesn't go away, then we have missed some "science". If that was the case, then I would feel a lot better looking back over those years, and knowing that we erred on the side of caution. We just don't know enough about these prion diseases to not take extra care.

Remember the days when people argued that seat belts were dangerous in cars because they stopped you from being thrown to safety? And that filtered cigarettes were safer? (Not that the others were dangerous...far from it)

I'm sure ten years from now, when we actually know more about prions, we will look back at today's science and shake our heads. I just hope that we are shaking our heads at how careful we were, not how reckless.

[rusty1]

What a waste of breath - apply the below
Cowboy Logic? – Not
Cowboy logic says when you discover you are riding a dead horse; the best strategy is to dismount.
However, in business we often try other strategies with a dead horse including the following.
1.Buy a stronger whip.
2.Change riders.
3.Convincing ourselves “this is the way have always ridden this horse.”
4.Appointing a committee to study the horse.
5.Arrange to visit other sites to see how they ride a dead horse.
6.Increasing the standards to ride the dead horse.
7.Appointing a task force to revive the dead horse.
8.Creating a training session to increase our riding ability.
9.Comparing the state of dead horses in today’s environment.
10. Change the requirements document declaring that “this horse is not dead.”
11.Hire contractors to ride the dead horse.
12.Harnessing several dead horses together to increase speed.
13.Declaring that no horse is to dead to beat.
14.Providing additional funding to increase the horses performance.
15. Do a study to se if the contractors can ride it cheaper.
16. Purchase a product to make a dead horse run faster.
17. Declare that the horse is better, faster, and cheaper dead.
18. Form a quality circle to find uses for dead horses.
19. Promote the dead horse to senior vice president.

Let us not forget that we never, ever, ask why the horse died.