The Myth of Free Trade

This film is making the rounds. I found an invitation to it in my mailbox. I am no fan of free trade, but I was truly shocked by some of the statistics and claims.-CG

From the Hoodwinked website:

All statistics are subject to interpretation, but our dependence on trade with the United States is regularly and deliberately exaggerated. Even an op-ed piece in the Globe and Mail by TVOntario's Dan Dunsky repeated the often-cited false assumption that "trade with the U.S. constitutes 52% of our GDP."

Here's a brief "reality check."

How dependent is Canada on exports to the United States?

Over 80 per cent of the Canadian economy is generated by internal, domestic transactions - Canadians producing, buying and selling among themselves.

Exports to the U.S. represent less than 17 per cent of Canada's economy and over 50 per cent of that is in oil, gas and raw materials.

After hundreds of years of trying to develop value-added industries in this country and get away from the "hewers of wood, drawers of water" dependence on extracting natural resources, NAFTA, through the proportional sharing clause, has encouraged a structural change in our economy, back to the old resource-dependent model.

"In 2005, for the first time in a generation, more than half of our total merchandise exports from Canada once again consisted of raw materials and natural resources." - Jim Stanford, Ph.D. economist.

Hoodwinked: the Myth of Free Trade

A film by Bill Dunn and Linda West

Guest speaker: David Orchard

Why Food Security ?

For several decades our Agriculture policies and by extension, Canadian Trade Policy, have been heavily influenced by economic concept of 'comparative advantage'. This IS the basic premise for the old GATT(General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade) and the current life form of this agreement, the WTO.

Is this a sustainable model for agriculture and for Canada? I have never believed this model, which supports the 'least cost' theory, was a direction for ANY country to take.
Factor in the recent "China" mess with the pet food disaster and you have a recipe for disaster!

For consumers who are just beginning to see what type of hydra has been developed in the food industry, the following article is just the tip of the iceberg:



Tainted-food exports a global worry

Pet deaths focus fresh scrutiny on China's chronic food safety woes
Apr 13, 2007 04:30 AM, Christopher Bodeen, Associated Press

SHANGHAI - The list of Chinese food exports rejected at American ports reads like a chef's nightmare: pesticide-laden pea pods, drug-laced catfish, filthy plums and crawfish contaminated with salmonella. Yet, it took a much more obscure item, contaminated wheat gluten, to focus public attention on a very real and frightening fact: China's chronic food safety woes are now an international concern.

In recent weeks, scores of cats and dogs have died of kidney failure blamed on eating pet food containing gluten from China that was tainted with melamine, a chemical used in plastics, fertilizers and flame retardants. While humans aren't believed at risk, the incident has sharpened concerns over China's food exports and the limited ability of U.S. inspectors to catch problem shipments.

"This really shows the risks of food purity problems combining with international trade," said Michiel Keyzer of the Centre for World Food Studies at Amsterdam's Vrije Universiteit. Just as with manufactured goods, exports of meat, produce, and processed foods from China have soared .

Chinese agricultural exports to Canada and the United States surged nearly 20-fold over the past 25 years, to $2.26 billion (U.S.) last year, prompting outcries from foreign farm sectors feeling pinched by low Chinese prices.

Worried about losing access to foreign markets and stung by tainted-food products scandals at home, China has in recent years tried to improve inspections, with limited success. The problems the government faces are legion. Pesticides and chemical fertilizers are used in excess to boost yields while harmful antibiotics are widely administered to control disease in seafood and livestock. Rampant industrial pollution risks introducing heavy metals into the food chain.

Farmers have used cancer-causing industrial dye Sudan Red to boost the value of their eggs and fed an asthma medication to pigs to produce leaner meat. Shoddy infant formula with little nutritional value has been blamed for causing severe malnutrition in hundreds of babies and killing at least 12.

With China increasingly intertwined in global trade, Chinese exporters are paying a price for unsafe practices. Excessive antibiotic or pesticide residues have caused bans in Europe and Japan on Chinese shrimp, honey and other products. Hong Kong blocked imports of turbot last year after inspectors found traces of malachite green, a possibly cancer-causing chemical used to treat fungal infections.

One source of the problem is China's fractured farming sector, comprised of small landholdings that make regulation difficult, experts said.

Small farms ship to market with little documentation. Testing of the safety and purity of farm products such as milk is often haphazard, hampered by fuzzy lines of authority among regulators. Only about 6 per cent of agricultural products were considered pollution-free in 2005, while better quality food officially stamped as "green" accounts for just 1 per cent of the total, according to U.S. figures.

For foreign importers, the answer is to know your suppliers and test thoroughly, industry experts said. Only a tiny percentage of the millions of shipments entering the U.S. each year are inspected, yet shipments from China were rejected at a rate of 200 per month this year, the largest from any country. "You just have to hope your system is strong enough and your producers are careful enough," said Todd Meyer, China director for the U.S. Grains Council.

To protect its foreign markets, China is trying to set up a dedicated export supply chain, sealed off from the domestic market, said Keyzer. Systems for tracing vegetables have been set up, although doing so for meat products is harder.
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Food Safety Anyone?

The latest issue on food safety to hit the airwaves, was ironically NOT about food for humans but food for pets. Many of you have been following or at least are aware of the deaths, recalls, lawsuits et al, that have been the inevitable results. Finding the contaminant took weeks, recalls impacted at least two major companies, who sourced their 'wheat gluten' form the same importer/distributor.

The issue of the melamine contaminant is not so important in the short term as the country the product originated from. As consumers of food, this should give us pause. The product could have just as easily been sourced for human consumption. On this occasion at least, family pets have become societies' 'canaries in the mines'.

Proponents of the 'least cost' theory of economics failed to take issues like food safety equivalence into account. This doesn't surprise me at all. Most economists live in a theoretical world, where a number of 'assumptions are just part of the 'equation'. Governments tell us they have examined food safety standards of other countries and found a way to determine comparable standards, in order to let trade proceed and traders to profit. This is supposed to comfort us all because then Canada profits and in the trickle down theory of economics...we all will eventually profit....somehow. "Trust us!", is the implied message.

I imagine this week's feature article in MacLeans will give people food for thought. It might even give those of you in agriculture pause. I knew many manufacturers of no name brand products often were the same ones who supplied the high end stuff in the stores. But I was blown away by the thought that even a companies' whole line wold be outsourced to the big boys as is done by Iaams. Menu Foods was producing their entire line until the recent debacle hit the airwaves.

The MacLeans article goes in depth and into the history of Menu as it pursued the lowest cost supplier of a component of its products. It outlines its products and the companies it supplied. The impact was huge.

This IS just the tip of the iceberg in our modern food distribution system. Like an iceberg 3/4 of it lies hidden and secret, waiting to do irreparable harm. The miserable labels on our products fail us daily as we try to figure out just what IS in our foods.

I am certain the pace of damage, as well as the scale, will simply get larger. No one is suggesting fundamental changes to our food systems and that is exactly what we really need. Consumers may have something to say about that.-CG

Is This The Beginning?

I am always, always, blown away by our species' arrogance. Man has always been driven to mold his environment. And we just have not been able to resist a variety of initiatives, that have stirred our curiosity and made life easier perhaps, but certainly not simpler!

What if our civilization is struck down, by something we are not able to solve? Has anyone really thought about the implications of this new concern that has been in the papers a lot lately. I am referring to Colony Collapse Disorder.

About a month ago this issue began to hit the press, as the American States began to notice a problem with their bees. It has since seemed to spread to other countries. A variety of potential causes have been suggested and our provincial Ministry of Agriculture has even partnered with the University of Guelph to see if they can come up with any answers. If we are really lucky, someone might. What if we are not lucky? Have any of us really thought about the repercussions?

Do think about it, long and hard.-CG

From to-days news:

Scientists claim radiation from handsets are to blame for mysterious 'colony collapse' of bees
By Geoffrey Lean and Harriet Shawcross
Published: 15 April 2007

It seems like the plot of a particularly far-fetched horror film. But some scientists suggest that our love of the mobile phone could cause massive food shortages, as the world's harvests fail.
They are putting forward the theory that radiation given off by mobile phones and other hi-tech gadgets is a possible answer to one of the more bizarre mysteries ever to happen in the natural world - the abrupt disappearance of the bees that pollinate crops. Late last week, some bee-keepers claimed that the phenomenon - which started in the US, then spread to continental Europe - was beginning to hit Britain as well.

The theory is that radiation from mobile phones interferes with bees' navigation systems, preventing the famously home loving species from finding their way back to their hives. Improbable as it may seem, there is now evidence to back this up.

Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD) occurs when a hive's inhabitants suddenly disappear, leaving only queens, eggs and a few immature workers, like so many apian Mary Celestes. The vanished bees are never found, but thought to die singly far from home. The parasites, wildlife and other bees that normally raid the honey and pollen left behind when a colony dies, refuse to go anywhere near the abandoned hives.

The alarm was first sounded last autumn, but has now hit half of all American states. The West Coast is thought to have lost 60 per cent of its commercial bee population, with 70 per cent missing on the East Coast. CCD has since spread to Germany, Switzerland, Spain, Portugal, Italy and Greece. And last week John Chapple, one of London's biggest bee-keepers, announced that 23 of his 40 hives have been abruptly abandoned.

Other apiarists have recorded losses in Scotland, Wales and north-west England, but the Department of the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs insisted: "There is absolutely no evidence of CCD in the UK."

The implications of the spread are alarming. Most of the world's crops depend on pollination by bees. Albert Einstein once said that if the bees disappeared, "man would have only four years of life left".

No one knows why it is happening. Theories involving mites, pesticides, global warming and GM crops have been proposed, but all have drawbacks.

German research has long shown that bees' behaviour changes near power lines.

Now a limited study at Landau University has found that bees refuse to return to their hives when mobile phones are placed nearby. Dr Jochen Kuhn, who carried it out, said this could provide a "hint" to a possible cause.

Dr. George Carlo, who headed a massive study by the US government and mobile phone industry of hazards from mobiles in the Nineties, said: "I am convinced the possibility is real."

The case against handsets:

Evidence of dangers to people from mobile phones is increasing. But proof is still lacking, largely because many of the biggest perils, such as cancer, take decades to show up.
Most research on cancer has so far proved inconclusive. But an official Finnish study found that people who used the phones for more than 10 years were 40 per cent more likely to get a brain tumour on the same side as they held the handset. Equally alarming, blue-chip Swedish research revealed that radiation from mobile phones killed off brain cells, suggesting that today's teenagers could go senile in the prime of their lives.

Studies in India and the US have raised the possibility that men who use mobile phones heavily have reduced sperm counts. And, more prosaically, doctors have identified the condition of "text thumb", a form of RSI from constant texting. Professor Sir William Stewart, who has headed two official inquiries, warned that children under eight should not use mobiles and made a series of safety recommendations, largely ignored by ministers.

Food Miles?!

This week's MacLeans has an article in it that surprised me. "It's All About those peas from China", i s full of interesting and to some degree, slightly shocking material about the frozen produce we consume on a regular basis all winter. As the major shopper in the household, I have been more and more depressed about the surprises I have had at my local grocery stores. From my perspective, they haven't been pleasant ones.

For years, I have been able to buy frozen vegetables, with relative confidence. As an Ontario resident, it was important to me to have that locally grown produce in the cold of the winter. Somehow, the latest practices of our retailers and food processors, slipped under my guard, while life happened.

I guess I shouldn't have been so surprised, manufacturers of everything else are 'outsourcing ' in droves.

This brings me to the concept of the Food Miles, also mentioned in the article. I think it is a idea the public needs to hear more about. I believe they want to but 'local' and Canadian, but no one, not farmers, governments and certainly not processors, are making it easy. What foolishness, to import products like frozen vegetables, milk powders or whatever, that can be grown here. The cost in terms of 'food miles' and the environment, is enormous and wasteful, not to mention the financial devastation seen in agriculture.

Now add in the incredible disaster facing pet food companies who 'sourced' a product like wheat gluten, incidentally, from China and got way more than they ever expected! This stuff could easily have been for human consumption. See what some believe is the root cause.

It would seem to me, that smart agriculture groups, should be having a good hard look at harnessing the enormous power of the public. Standards like the ones proposed nationally for cheese and have processors screaming, should be important to consumers, if they knew about it!

Considering the continuing food fiasco's from offshore, I certainly have no confidence in ideas like 'comparative' or 'similar' standards, forced on an unsuspecting public, by our governments, businesses and the WTO.

With the environment and global warming hitting the levels it currently is, perhaps Food Miles, are an idea whose time is come.-CG

Nothing is Clear....

The results of the Barley vote are in and the controversy does not appear to over. There have been a number of press releases complaining about the process, scrutineers (or lack of) and so on, leading up to the results of the vote becoming public. However, the results are being disputed, vigorously. This past weeks' offerings............

OTTAWA, Ontario, March 28, 2007 - The Honourable Chuck Strahl, Minister of Agriculture and Agri-Food and Minister for the Canadian Wheat Board, today announced that Canada's New Government has listened, and will deliver, to Western Canadian barley producers who voted in favour of marketing choice.

A clear majority of the farmers who cast votes in the barley plebiscite indicated they wanted to end the Canadian Wheat Board's monopoly on barley and have the freedom to market their own product.

"We have delivered on our promise to give farmers a voice on the future of barley marketing in Western Canada," said Minister Strahl. "Their decision in favour of marketing choice is clear and we intend to give them that that opportunity in the coming crop year."

Minister Strahl said that nearly 30,000 producers participated in the plebiscite and a majority has provided the Government with a mandate to move ahead.

"Over 60 percent of producers want to decide how to market their own product. We will now begin work on the appropriate amendments to Canadian Wheat Board regulations to remove barley from the Canadian Wheat Board's monopoly," said Minister Strahl.

"We will move forward decisively because producers and the sector need clarity and market certainty. I will be consulting with the directors of the Canadian Wheat Board about the changes we will be making," said Minister Strahl. "It is the Government's intention that marketing choice for Western Canada's barley growers - including an option to continue to sell to the Canadian Wheat Board - will be reality by August 1 of this year."

For the results and more information on marketing choice, please visit
www.agr.gc.ca/cwb.******************************

For Immediate Release March 28, 2007

Agriculture and Food
FLAWED PROCESS SKEWS WHEAT BOARD PLEBISCITE RESULTS

Saskatchewan's Agriculture Minister said today that his federal counterpart has no mandate to change the Canadian Wheat Board (CWB).

Mark Wartman said federal Agriculture Minister Chuck Strahl was repeatedly warned about the need for clarity in the plebiscite on barley marketing, but refused to listen.

"We told the Minister that there would be problems with the results if he followed the process that he did," Wartman said. "And now, we have 45 per cent of producers in Saskatchewan favouring the CWB single desk and less than 13 per cent wanting the CWB out of barley marketing. I can get no clarity from this result. Those choosing the option to have both the CWB and an open market did so for a variety of reasons."

Wartman said he is not surprised by this outcome, given the three option plebiscite design and the inclusion of the impossible "best of both worlds" second option.

"We warned Minister Strahl that this would confuse the issue and we now find ourselves with no clear result," Wartman said.

Wartman added that the plebiscite was designed to produce the result the federal government sought. It was not designed for farmers to have a real say on the marketing systems they support. He posed several questions for Minister Strahl:

1. The federal government's own Task Force noted that it would be
difficult for the CWB to operate in an open market and the CWB yesterday indicated that it could provide no value in an open, multiple-seller market.

What has changed to make this a viable option?

2. Will the Minister pursue a similar approach on supply management, asking producers of those commodities if they want supply management and choice? Will he give them a similar three question plebiscite?

3. Why is Ottawa not prepared to respect the direction provided by the
producer-elected directors of the CWB?

Out of the Mouths of ...Consumers?

This article simply points out to me the lack of disconnect we have with our customers. They want to buy from Canadian farmers. Canadian farmers want to sell to these consumers. Somehow, the stuff is NOT making it to the right market.

The culprits are large retail food chains, government policy or the lack thereof and farmers who imagine their issues and their products will somehow (by osmosis perhaps?) be available or even recognized by the buying public. This disease is endemic in all sectors of agriculture.

Processing capacity disappears, consumers are being hoodwinked and farmers are unable to compete, as Canada spirals into the status of a nation that may not be able to feed herself!-cg

Produce tasty policy we can munch all winter
Mar 16, 2007 04:30 AM
Joe Fiorito

My interest in Canadian food policy begins with breakfast and continues throughout the day. As you also know from previous columns, we are on the verge, as a nation, of developing new food policy.

Oh, momentous occasion.

I went to one of the public consultations a while back. There were many farmers in attendance; also many food processors and crop marketers, and a surplus of farm bureaucrats. But there were no home cooks and no supermarket shoppers.

That's a shame because we are the end users of Canada's agricultural policy.
Oh, I am sure Ag Canada knows that most of us can't take time off work to go to policy development meetings, but if they took us seriously, they would be asking questions up and down the aisles of my local supermarket.

You get what you pay for, I suppose.

I got a ton of mail from two previous columns on this subject. To summarize: We want good Canadian food at a fair price and we want our farmers to make a decent living.

Allow me to pass along some of my own urban observations, and to draw some city-boy conclusions.

Our growing season is short, but a winter-long diet of cabbage is out of the question. We therefore need tender lettuce, ripe tomatoes and sunny fruit; this is our reward for living in darkness half the year; we will always import oranges and kiwi fruit.

But how do we lessen our dependence on foreign growers? And how do we keep our own farmers in business?

Most of us, if given a choice, would happily buy Canadian produce. Oh, turn that on its head: buying Canadian ought not to be a choice, it ought to be the default position.

Alas, the big supermarkets seem to prefer to sign long-term contracts with foreign suppliers, even for foods that keep, like potatoes and garlic and carrots.

Our farmers suffer as a result.

Because we live in a harsh climate, you and I suffer at the table in the winter because perishable foreign produce must be picked before it is ripe so that it can be shipped; food picked before it is ripe does not taste good.

What to do?

It ought to be easy for us to eat well and locally in the summer. We are a smart and nimble people with a network of roads and rail lines. We should have no trouble getting our best seasonal stuff into stores when it is at its freshest.

An aside: Why isn't the last car on the GO train packed with fresh fruit in the summer and the fall?

What about the winter?

The priciest frozen berries and vegetables in my supermarket this past weekend were from Mexico, Chile and China. Do we not know how to freeze food in the land of ice and snow?
A nice woman spoke up at my table during one round of the consultation.

She is a member of the Toronto Food Policy Council. She said, "I have plum tarts in my fridge from when plums were in season." Good for her.

But most working people I know don't have the time – and few have the expertise any more – to put up a dozen tarts and store them for the winter. And yet the woman is onto something.
Our food processors should lock up all the surplus summer plums – not to mention the peaches and the raspberries – and add value by producing exceptionally high quality, reasonably priced frozen tarts, providing us with sunny comfort during our long and ugly winter.

Another woman at my table – she grows asparagus – said, "There were growers throwing away their asparagus last year. We were sending stuff to Michigan for processing." I rest my case.

As for the winter table, if the Dutch can grow the best and sweetest tomatoes in the world in their greenhouses, why on earth can't we do the same here?

Incidentally, I listened to four hours of talk about food policy and I never once heard anyone talk about juiciness and crispness, nor did anyone wax poetical about the sheer pleasure of the taste of the good food grown here.

Make a policy out of pleasure.

And be industrially creative. I rely on a premium brand of pasta, Rustichella D'Abruzzo. Inexplicably, it sells for the same price here as it does in Italy. This is not just wrong, it's wasteful and foolish, and it may be good for my belly but it is bad for the environment.

A modest proposal:

We grow the best wheat in the world; the Italians import our grain by the ton and they sell it back to us as priest-stranglers. Why can't Rustichella D'Abruzzo be enticed to set up a pasta factory here? If Toyota can turn a profit making cars in Ontario ...

Speaking of which:

The corner store went out of fashion when the car gave birth to the supermarket. We need a more efficient network for the distribution of produce throughout the city. Let the big grocers think small. Let them resurrect the corner store.

These are my modest thoughts on food policy.

Joe Fiorito usually appears Monday, Wednesday and Friday. Email:

jfiorito@thestar.ca