Safe food? Maybe.

As a consumer of food in Canada, I had always thought of my food as safe. In Canada and many of the provinces, regulations exist to ensure that farmers do ‘the right thing’. Many agricultural marketing agencies have regulations their farmers must follow to produce this safe food.

Dairy farmers have many regulations to follow and have done so for years. Milk processors must pasteurize milk before processing. Chicken farmers have implemented a whole host of HACCP –like regulations for their barns. Fruit and vegetable growers must follow guidelines and regulations on herbicides and Pesticides on their fields. Beef from Canadian producers must be either federally or provincially inspected in our plants as ‘Grade A’. Carcasses with certain diseases or other problems cannot be sold. Egg farmers must have their eggs graded and legitimate producers must be licensed. They too, must follow regulations in their barns to ensure the quality and safety of the eggs offered for sale to the public. Inspectors from many agencies, follow up, to make sure these regulations are adhered to.

Now enter the 21st century and the new world of globalization. What does this mean for all of us consuming food in Canada?

For one thing, it means we can no longer be assured that our food dollar is benefiting Canadian farmers at all or that it is grown or processed according to Canadian and provincial food safety regulations.

Those clever big boys from multi-nationals and their government shills have ensured that food safety regulations or any laws of the land cannot be used to prevent their products from entering the country. Canadian inspectors of food shipped into this country are woefully under-funded and short staffed.

No one is empowered to do anything or appear to care, that many countries exporting food products to Canada, have no regulations imposed on them at all. Their farmers do not have to meet stringent Canadian standards of food production. For one thing, they can apply pesticides and herbicides Canadians have not used for decades.

Who knows what standards any farm from outside Canada, come under. Nobody is telling!
When Canadian farmers attempt to challenge these unfair tactics, our own Canadian International Trade Tribunal (CITT) usually rules against them. Canadian politicians talk a lot but to date, no action has been taken to stop or enforce Canadian standards on these imported products. Many farm groups have attempted for years to stop the unfair importation of apples, cherries, garlic, strawberries, corn, milk protein powders, chicken and chicken parts and butter oil blends, to name just a few.

Of course big business wants this to continue. They ship in the product they want to use (at much lower prices ) process their products here and sell it to us, the unprotected and unsuspecting Canadian consumer.

To add insult to injury, processors are not passing on their reduced input costs to Canadians. Any cost benefits likely accrue to the few food retailers competing in Canada.

When the product hits the store shelves, consumers do not see any pricing benefit and they have no idea of the source of the ingredients. (Thanks to Health Canada and inadequate labeling regulations.)

I believe consumers would be horrified at this blatant disregard for their safety, desires and opportunity for informed choices at the grocery store……if they knew what was going on.

Someone needs to tell them.

More "Think Tank" Thinking

I am tired, tired, tired of the many 'experts' out there who are doing study after study, to prove to dairy farmers that their system is broken and they had best give it all up. I am sure that these 'think tanks' are a) paid by someone other than dairy farmers to tell them these so called salient facts and b) subscribe to the marketing theory of 'if you say something often enough they are going to start to believe you'. The most recent entrant on the Think Tank stage to 'study' the dairy industry again is the George Morris Centre.

The newest drivel to be passed along to farmer, consumer and governments alike is entitled:

After Hong Kong: Potential Impacts of the WTO Doha Round
SPECIAL REPORT
Larry Martin, Al Mussell, and Terri-lyn Moore
April, 2006 (http://www.georgemorris.org )

The latest results from Doha have been analyzed to death by many but not content with that, the vaunted George Morris Centre has provided us with just one more. After a great deal of detail , charts, tariff lists and a discussion about what the “United States probably would not do”, the only thing I can take away from the whole package, is that anyone who thinks they’ve got it right about what the Americans may do in any situation, hasn’t been paying much attention to the irrational activities that go on south of this border, when Americans think they’ve got something to loose! That is one horse Canadian farmers had better not bet on, at any price!!

The other real issue and the point of the whole report, is to provide the powers that be in our Federal government, with the ammunition they may like to have, to take a position at the WTO, that will only result in more harm to the one thing they should be protecting AND promoting, as a solution to farm price woes. That is ‘market power‘ for farmers. The Canadian Wheat Board and Supply Management are the only 2 systems that have managed to do that for farmers in the last 50 years.

With fewer and fewer processors and retailers in this country, any farmer who thinks he is going to go it alone against these giants is just dreaming in Technicolor. He also hasn’t been paying attention to the track record of these large multi-nationals in their dealings with agriculture.
As outlined by John Kenneth Galbraith in many of his books, the issue of corporations and their power in the marketplace and the world, may be out of control. They are a law unto themselves.

Not content with this re-analysis, the George Morris Centre goes one step farther and is trying to tell dairy farmers that they have no choice, they may as well prepare for the inevitable, etc, etc., etc. I have heard all of this before. Dairy farmers and their leaders had better remember that they have everything to loose and nothing to gain, by listening to another Think Tank’s thinking.