Is my beef Canadian?

[silverback]

At the end of one of the last posts it read "make sure your beef says Product of Canada".

Now as I go out to my local grocery store or restaurant, how do I really know that it is Canadian? When I ask them they all say yes it is. They would not lie to me would they? I have been trying to buy from a local butcher shop lately when possible and I do trust him as he does buy product from Lakeside, so I am assuming it is canadian grown at least.?

[farmers_son]

There is a list of companies with permits to import beef and veal at:

http://www.dfait-maeci.gc.ca/trade/eicb/agric/Beef_VealQHList05-en.asp

However, just because a company does not appear on the list is no guarantee that they are not wholesaling beef that was purchased from an importer and is being resold. Beef is an international commodity.

[silverback]

I guess I cannot understand why we cannot stamp canadian product one way and other product some other way? I think the U.S. will have COOL someday, why can't we?

[Horse]

As I understand this ,if the retailer puts a knife to a piece of meat it becomes a canadian product.

[cowman]

The beef that killed the kids in Washington State a few years ago (Jack-In-The-Box) was clearly labeled "product of Canada" on the shipping boxes. As it turned out there was a lot of diseased kangaroo meat mixed in there! Now that was sort of amazing as we have sort of a shortage of kangaroos up here!
Turns out it was meat from Australia.
Apparently the Aussies had filled their quota for beef with the USA, but sleazy dealers from Australia and Canada, had devised this crooked scheme to bypass the restrictions! Dump the Aussie beef(or in this case kangaroo!) into Canadian boxes and ship it over!"Product of Canada"!
When this sort of garbage takes place, you have to wonder if the USA has a point about the safety of "product of Canada"?

[farmers_son]

That was no sleazy deal.

Once beef enters either the U.S. or Canada under each countries beef import laws, it can travel within North America without border restrictions, unlike Canadian beef which cannot enter the U.S. if it is OTM. That Aussie beef is now effectively North American beef and part of the North American beef supply whether the beef entered North American through a U.S. port or a Canadian port. This trade happens all the time, especially now.

Cowman, it could be you have been reading too much R-Calf propaganda. Certainly your remarks serve to throw gas on the R-Calf fire. The Jack in the Box situation dates back to 1993 where 3 children died and 600 others got sick as a result of E. coli O157:H7 poisoning by eating undercooked hamburgers at a large national food chain.

Jack in the Box received its patties from a U.S. firm, Vons Companies Inc. which supplies product to the Jack in the Box parent company Foodmaker. Those boxes would not have any mention of Product of Canada. They were a product of the USA.

Foodmaker was cited as saying in a release that Beef Packers Inc,
Cattleman's Choice, Fresno Meat Co, Monfort Inc, a unit of ConAgra Inc
<CAG.N>, Orleans International Inc, RBR Meat Company, Service Packing Co, The Vons Company, a unit of Safeway Inc <SWY.N>, and Westland Inc, among others, agreed to pay a share of the $58.5 million settlement, but each firm's share was not disclosed.

There was no indication that there was any connection to Canada beef.


http://www.marlerclark.com/news/jackbox2.htm
http://archives.foodsafetynetwork.ca/fsnet/1998/2-1998/fs-02-27-98-01.txt

[silverback]

Is there any truth that it is easier to ship beef to the US in a box than it is to ship it between provinces?? (As long as it is UTM ?)

[farmers_son]

Unless the beef is federally inspected then it cannot be sold out of the province, so there are indeed restrictions on interprovincial trade in beef.

[cowman]

Hmmm...I guess I can't trust my memory anymore? Seems I distinctly remember watching a news cast where they said, definitely that it was Aussie kangaroo meat, sold as Canadian meat. Hmmm...I can distinctly remember the show holding up the box ... Product of Canada...in big bold letters!
Maybe I was a victim of tabloid media...hey wait a minute...it was the CBC National!
I guess I must have been brainwashed by Aliens or something? Or maybe I have Alzheimers? I hope I have it right, at least, that it was E-coli that killed those kids?

[farmers_son]

The patties that caused this problem with Jack in the Box were made by a subsidiary of Safeway. I think if you considered it for a moment, it is highly unlikely that Canada would be adding value by making patties here at home and exporting them to the U.S. Those patties were made in the States. We used to send live cows south for slaughter in the U.S. more than cow beef. There certainly was no mention of any Canadian firms or Australia either in the lawsuit and those lawyers tend to cast a wide net. American firms ponied up for $58.5 million in damages for nothing if the real cause was in Canada.

Australian grinding beef is frozen and has almost no detectable levels of E.Coli which was occasionally a problem with fresh meat back then but very seldom now. Even if there was kangaroo involved, and I think that is a rumour started by higher priced competitors, it would not have hurt anyone.

And it was E.Coli that killed those three kids at Jack in the Box. Peters Drive-In in Calgary had a problem with E.Coli in April but not from hamburgers. It was the marshmallow milkshake. Lettuce, apple juice, strawberries have caused E.Coli problems too. But everyone thinks it is always the hamburger. It is never the hamburger if the hamburger is cooked properly, no matter what is in the box that the CBC shows on the news.

[rain]

My understanding is that if it says canada A, AA, AAA it has to be fed and killed in Canada. this still leaves it open in cattle came from the states and fed and killed in Canada they could be called Canadian.

[cowman]

Well I don't think the hamburger trade or the subway type trade is too concerned with agrading standard? The fact is once it goes through the grinder...who has a clue? It could be beef, kangaroo, or rat!
Personally I don't want to eat it if it wasn't grown in Canada or the USA!

[grassfarmer]

I liked the last paragraph there f_s
e-coli is a very big problem and too often it is blamed on beef when it is just as likely to come from the "healthy" side salad.
In Scotland since about 1997 it has not been possible to get any animals with tag on the slaughtered. I'm not talking a lot of tag - i'm talking any tag! This was introduced because some "expert" concluded that the faecal material attached to the animals coats was the likliest cause of e-coli infections in humans. I don't know if it occurred to them that once the animal was opened up there was a lot more potential for infection. Equally they could have looked at the poor hygene standards of consumers food handling and storage practises.

Laterally we were belly shearing 800 lambs a year and belly clipping all fat cattle. Clipping yearling limo x bull beef animals was my least favourite occupation! We got suckered into doing this on-farm because the slaughterman's union convinced the Government that there was an unacceptable risk of their members getting reflex kicks if they had to clip cattle post mortum.
The primary ag producer always seems to be last in line for reward but first in line for any crappy deals getting handed out.