Commodities VS Products

[TOM4CWB]

Chaffmeister;

THe point of this topic was to highlight "we need to provide what our customer needs".

In this case the Japaneese need a BSE test... why not provide it?

If I am willing to pay 25 cents a pound more for beef I am serving to my children and freinds... why not provide me with my needs?

If I can provide a top quality product to a wheat miller/processor at a fair price... agreed upon freely by both of us, why should the CWB/Feds stop us from doing business?

On the Processor side... BSE I am told has paid for the total capital cost of the packing infrastructure twice over since May of 03. Do you think processors really want testing... which will drastically reduce profit margins?

[TOM4CWB]

Chaffmeister;

I see this on DTN;

"A New "Gold Standard" Test for BSE?
01/16 12:42
The argument over whether cows younger than 30 months of age need to be tested for BSE may boil down to which testing method to believe. USDA says the "gold standard" test doesn't reveal BSE in cows under 30 months, so what's the point? Some Japanese scientists think the U.S. needs a new "gold standard," as DTN Special Correspondent Richard Hanson reports.

By Richard Hanson DTN Special Correspondent

TOKYO (DTN) -- This is what dining out on beef, post-December 23, may be like unless someone figures out how to test properly for bovine spongiform encephalopathy, widely known as mad cow disease:

The chef is about to flame a juicy cut of grain-fed U.S. prime sirloin beef at your favorite Teppan-yaki place.

The chef says: "This meat is safe."

Hungry customer, bib in place, asks: "How do you know?"

Chef: "Well, it passed America's Gold Standard test -- it's a big 'negative' for that mad cow disease."

Customer: "Great, no mad cow."

Chef: "Yeah, it probably doesn't matter that it was 'positive' -- you know, a little gamy -- in that Western Blotting test, the one they use in Japan. How do you want your meat done? Rare?"

Customer: "Uh, how's the chicken today?"

Gold Standard and Western Blotting -- both scientific methods for detecting and confirming the deadly cattle disease bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) -- have become buzz words in a delicate stand-off between the U.S. Department of Agriculture and Japanese farm officials over which tests are really going to tell the truth about which animals have mad cow disease.

U.S. officials have questioned recent tests done by Japan, and favored by Japanese scientists, called Western Blotting, that have produced positive (meaning the animal has BSE) test results in the latest two cases of the disease in the autumn last year. These were positives on cattle much younger than usual (21 and 23 months old), which shocked the Japanese public and caused confusion in the scientific community.

What puzzled everyone is that when these same two cases were tested using the test USDA and others consider the Gold Standard, the results were negative -- no BSE. This test is called immunohistochemical screening. A lab uses a tissue sample that is treated with a stain carrying antibodies that cling to the abnormal prions that cause the disease. A pathologist then looks for an accumulation of stained antibodies in the sample..."

What is Science... and who exactly do we believe?

Don't we err on side of caution?

[charliep]

Tom4cwb

Not sure where you are going with this.

On the trade/access side, negotiations are going on as we speak. Issues around level of testing and age of animals who understand BSE and risk better than I do. I am not convinced Canada/the US will get access to the Japanese/other markets even if all animals were tested. What do the Japanese want and are they willing to commit to it? I think it is important not to lock the livestock industry into a bunch of constraints without clear cut benefits.

On the food safety side, I have to query you why you think Canada is on the verge of a BSE epedemic? Relative to all the risks we expose ourselves to by just getting up in the morning, where does BSE fit as a risk? Or are your issues simply to get trade access to other countries?

Expressing my view, I think that increased testing is necessary. Age and percentage are beyond my expertise. Policy around specified risk materials is also critical (this is where the disease potentially comes from) both from the aspect of recycling in feed protein products and excluding from human food products (advanced meat recovery/looking at how meat cutting around high risk areas is handled). I just want to make sure the policy has clear objectives, minimizes the impact on Canada's competitiveness relative to other exporters and ensures a safe product consumers can have confidence in.

[parsley]

If you want it simplified charliep, this is what the consumer expects and demands:

Ground up animals, including brains, CANNOT be made into feed and fed to ruminants. That's the KEY worrisome issue for consumers. And Food Inspection has to make sure it doesn't happen.


Checking prepared feed and feed mills is not a cattleman's expense, as I see it.

Parsley

[charliep]

Just as a question, should the things you are asking for be done strictly by government reguation or is there room to set up protocols/trace backs that can satisfy specific customer needs (even Japan)? Example a more clearly defined natural beef (100 % tested, no animal by products feed of any sort, minimal on an as need basis/documented use of antibiotics)?

[TOM4CWB]

Charlie;

Here is where I am going:

More of the same DTN Article

"In Japan, the test-all policy, started soon after the September 2001 announcement of Japan's first BSE case, was originally thought to be overkill by Japanese experts. It involves testing each year about 1.2 million cows that are sent to the slaughterhouse.

"At first, we proposed testing only 900,000 cattle," recalls Professor Takashi Onodera, a molecular immunologist at the University of Tokyo who heads a BSE governmental advisory panel. "The politicians in the (ruling) Liberal Democratic Party pushed for testing all. Since it only meant another 300,000 cows, we agreed."

Professor Onodera is one of a number of scientists who say the test results of Japan's last two mad cow cases -- numbers eight and nine -- may mean that they have found a "a new form of the prion causing the disease." In essence, the Japanese scientists think there may be different strains of BSE, with some showing up in younger animals.

The test that found BSE in Japan's last two cases is called Western Blotting, and it is used in some European countries as well. Among its advantages over the Gold Standard test are speed -- results in hours instead of weeks -- and price (less than a fourth the Gold Standard test). The lower price allows many more animals to be tested without increasing the cost. In Western Blotting a brain-tissue specimen is liquefied and then treated with a special mixture that degrades normal prions, leaving only the BSE-specific abnormal prions in the specimen.

Onodera and some other scientists believe Western Blotting should be the new "gold standard."...

USDA is not convinced.

At a press conference, USDA chief veterinarian Ronald Dehaven, questioned the Japanese test results for the the last two BSE cases. "They (the Japanese) have reported them as positive, and yet both of those animals were negative on the immuno-histo chemistry test, the test that is internationally recognized as the gold standard test. They have been positive on other tests," he said, referring to the Western Blotting tests....

Onodera is waiting for the results of more extensive experiments being conducted in Japan by two government laboratories -- The National Institute of Infectious Diseases and the National Institute of Animal Health. They have started scientific tests by infecting "transgenic" mice with the suspect BSE tissue, but the results won't be available until later this year at the earliest.

In the meantime, the world just has to wait for further developments. BSE has proven to be a maddeningly fickle pathogen and it does not grow very rapidly even in laboratory conditions. In the eyes of many Japanese consumers, Japan's test-all policy is proving its worth, at least in easing consumer worries about eating beef. What worries scientists is that Japan is just beginning to see the results of having fed cattle with meat and bone feed -- the chief suspect in spreading BSE. Japan banned it only after the first case was found in September 2001. The government is still trying to locate and destroy stockpiles of the feed.

It is unclear just what the U.S. will propose next week when a senior delegation from the USDA arrives for talks with their Japanese counterparts. But on the critical question of testing methods, the governments are very far apart.

Onodera has his own test: "Will you eat meat from a cow that tests negative on one test and positive on the other?""



How about you Charlie, would you serve beef to your best freinds or their children, if it tested positive to the Japaneese "Western Blotting tests"?


Is this not the real question to be asked here?

[TOM4CWB]

Charlie;

I see this on another DTN article;

"When Will Mexico Open Border?
01/16 15:11
Jerry Hagstrom

DTN Political Correspondent

WASHINGTON (DTN) -- Agriculture Secretary Veneman's press conference with the Canadian and Mexican agriculture ministers today ended in confusion over when and how Mexico might reopen the border to U.S. beef...."

"Told by a reporter that other countries' decisions to close their border to U.S. beef was no different than the way the United States has acted in reaction to BSE in other countries and ...

reminded that the United States still refuses to accept Japanese beef even though Japan tests every animal for BSE...,

Veneman said it was "true" that the United States has excluded meat from other countries. But Veneman said that when BSE was first discovered in Europe, much less was known about the disease and it was on a much bigger scale.

Veneman declined to discuss any proposals the United States might present to Japan. U.S. officials are expected to visit Japan next week to discuss BSE."

What a mess Charlie...

We in North America are a bunch arrogant ...

[parsley]

charliep,

Tracebacks are and can be done by industry, groups, individuals etc. IP systems are in place for some segments. Trademarking has been in place for a long time. Or organic IP. where there is an industry certification requirement in place, but certification is not a specific government function. It's self-policed. Trust is the chip of commerce here. Trust is the only valuable tool that makes this system work.

BUT there are legislative requirements that are in place, too. For example, national legislation like CWB licensing requirements. Or food inspection. Or say, meat inspection.It is a legislated, federal system. You can't kill 1000 steers in your back yard and sell them to safeway without inspection.

Here is where the system has gone amiss. CFIA has not done their job when it has come to meat. What if the inspectors not only NOT inspect the killed 1000 steers in your back yard that are sold to Safeway, but they allow you to feed them nuclear waste? Consumers either trust or they don't. In this case, they don't. Internationally, they don't and this is the huge problem.

Traditionally, in Canada. the public have been less trusting of the private sector and more trusting of Government, I think, because Governments supposedly had an arm's lengh role to play in inspection etc.

Their role has deteriorated,particularly in the last decade, because Governments increasingly, have become partners with the private sector. You cannot perform a proper regulatory function if you have an investment arm at risk; thus the regulatory arm becomes ineffective.

Hence, the private sector has assumed a much larger self-regulation role, is my observation.

Federal and Provincial Governments cannot be prime investors as well as sole regulators, because buyers will simply go elsewhere. Just an observation.

Parsley

[TOM4CWB]

Charlie;

Third parties quality control systems like SGS has developed... need to be encouraged.

SGS is the third party arbitator in Canadian grain transactions... to solve CGC quality issues in the export countries we ship to... I have heard.

Perhaps such a testing system for meat needs to be created... with certificates of testing and quality on beef going to Japan. This way If we meet the quality standards Japan requires... SGS could certify this beef free of BSE... using Japanese standards...

And the beef export markets could be reopened for our industry to Japan.

Specialty processors may be needed for IP processing to fulfill these requirements... so be it.

Again the "commodity" mentality has cost us billions in Canada, not only in the beef sector... but also the with specialty wheat and barley shipments.

[cowman]

TOM: If we have a system that creates in essence a two tiered inspection, then quite frankly I as a Canadian consumer, would want the higher standard also? If its good enough for the Japanese, then that is the product I want! Not the inferior product, only good enough for North America?
We compromize food safety at our own peril. And it does not matter if the "science" says food safety is not compromized. The "perception" that it has been compromized is much more important? Because if no ones buying, it doesn't matter one iota what the "science" says? Now so far they are buying, but more cases of BSE could rapidly change that? And with the added testing we definitely should get more cases...the "science" says that! Now if this added testing is in fact bogus and in reality shoot,shovel, shutup then we might be able to con the public? I hope that doesn't happen because I would hate to think I am part of an industry that is in reality a shell game.