Grrrrr

[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.

[cowman]

But grassfarmer the Japanese consumer is totally confident in the product even after 9 cases? Will the Canadian consumer be confident after 9 cases? With a universal test ALL diseased animals are removed from the food chain. With hit and miss testing no one is assured that all animals are removed. Do you ever doubt for a moment that some BSE infected animals have entered the food chain? If the cow up north didn't have pneumonia she probably would have entered the food chain. Consider that she was bought out of a drought sale by the American catfish farmer? She could have just as easily have gone for slaughter then?
Removing all SRMs sounds good but it is not possible to get 100% of the material. There is cross contamination, it is virtually impossible to get it all.
The whole thing now is about perception. With only two cases in NA the perception is generally that our product is safe. What happens when that rises to 10? or 20? And the "science" says that should happen, I do believe? So either the USDA and the CFIA fudge the tests or go to universal testing.

[grassfarmer]

Cowman, I still feel that removing specified offals is the way to ensure safe beef. I don't know how Japan's beef consumption compares to what it was pre-BSE certainly when they had cases of the disease their consumption dropped by 70% just like it did in Britain. Canada and the US have not experienced such drop offs in demand. Two other thoughts on the subject are: Britain has regained it's pre-BSE beef consumption levels without testing all their young animals. A Washington Univ. study found: "that Japanese consumers after the BSE discovery in Japan showed that they would pay more than 50 percent more for beef labeled BSE inspected than for the same cuts that hadn't been inspected."
Would Canadian consumers, or North American ones pay that?

[ianben]

Sorry guys

I dont think you should ignore Rusty.

Testing, Open borders, no more cases will not put things back how they were last May.

Your problem today is too much beef and the only answer is to produce less

Some of you must get off that dead horse.

[cakadu]

What I am hearing is that there is a feeling that big corporations seem to be taking advantage of producers and I'm sure that it is the case to some degree.

It has been my experience that no one can do to you what you don't allow them to do or put another way, if someone is doing something to you that you don't like, then you are allowing it to happen.

I'm very curious to know at what stage did producers bought into this notion of bigger is better and put themselves at the mercy of bigger corporations? How is it that we just kept producing more and more of what we couldn't sell?

It seems to me that the more that was produced, the more producers were forced to get in line to at least sell something and not be stuck with copious amounts of stock with no where to go.

The way we have been going is not going to be sustainable, for anyone as far as I can gleen from all of these posts. Ianben has a good point - nothing is ever going to put us back to where we were pre-May 20th, 2003.

This is also sadly something that we cannot eat our way out of, no matter how much consumsers support beef producers by consuming beef.

Perhaps what we need to do is look at what is going to be sustainable in the future. What does it look like?

Rsomer in another thread has given worst-case scenario in terms of the border not opening until AFTER the election in November (lord knows G.W. is going to need all the votes he can get).

I don't think we can keep doing it the way we were doing it because it hasn't produced the best results from what I can gather. Pointing fingers and laying blame is a solution, but is it the best one and how will it help in the long run?

There has been lots of talk in the last few threads about processing and selling one's own beef - isn't that what used to happen before the likes of the big packers got involved?

I really would like to get my head around this and understand - it might also be of benefit to consumers like "enough" so that they can get a better understanding. Unfortunately, there are a significant number of people out there who think the same way.

[grassfarmer]

Cakadu, I would recommend you read "The farm crisis, bigger farms and the myths of competition and efficiency" - an excellent document published by the National Farmers Union (Canada) Nov 20th 2003. A friend gave it to me so I don't know if it would be available online but it provided me with a whole new outlook on agriculture in Canada.

[WoolyBear]

The paper was available online on the Nation Farmers Union website........