A rchive Date
[ 08-08-2003 ]
Category
[ International Relations ]
sub-Categoy
[ Canada ]
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[http://www.canoe.ca/Columnists/harris.html
What's their beef
By MICHAEL HARRIS -- For The Ottawa Sun
August 8, 2003
Without any fanfare except an embassy employee sent out to pick up a package from a local Ottawa butcher shop, Japan has lifted its ban on Canadian beef.
This past week, the Embassy of Japan placed an order for some Canadian beef tongues, which it got for just under $20. Not much, I admit, but a start.
Somewhere in the embassy, which is Japanese soil, the trumped up, overblown and terribly damaging ban on Canadian beef showed itself in its full hypocrisy. Not safe enough to be exported to Japan, but safe enough to chow down on behind the discreet diplomatic doors of the very country that is costing the Canadian beef industry $10 million a day.
With dead Alberta cattle rotting in ranchers' fields and a distinctly gloves-on approach by the federal government to getting this phony ban lifted, (Public Works Minister Ralph Goodale being the heroic exception) Japan has so far gotten away with thumbing its nose at all the evidence.
After a massive investigation by experts from other countries, including the Swiss and the Americans, there was absolutely no evidence of miffed cow let alone mad cow in this country's beef industry. By contrast, Japan itself has had seven cases of mad cow since Sept. 1, 2001, the day a dairy cow started to shake in Chiba east of Tokyo.
And then there is the issue of that single, afflicted cow in Alberta that has led to 4,000 Western Canadians losing their jobs, and maybe their industry if the U.S. continues to follow Japan's lead and ban our beef. The animal never got into the market. And although every system can be made safer, (including ours for inspecting beef and slaughterhouses), the fact is the diseased animal was detected. One of the world's best food inspection systems ultimately worked.
The federal government has been asleep at a particularly dangerous switch while the losses of Canadian cattlemen move towards the billion dollar mark. The Japanese ban is bad enough. But the punitive leverage the Japanese are attempting to exercise on the Americans could lead to full blown disaster.
The Japanese know, for example, that the Americans have never lifted a ban against a country with a case of mad cow. They also know that their threat to ban U.S. beef by Sept. 1 should that country's agricultural boss, Ann Veneman, permit Canadian beef into the United States carries serious weight. One-third of all beef exported from the U.S. goes to Japan. If that flow were suddenly stopped, the American beef industry would feel the pain.
The Japanese position is intolerable on another point, made so forcefully by Ralph Goodale and Dr. Brian Evans of the Canadian Food Inspection Agency. If science and fairness can't lift a punitive and baseless ban on Canadian beef, what will other countries take as the lesson from this brewing catastrophe for Alberta and Canada? That owning up is the way to go? That meticulous, professional and credible investigation will win the day? I don't think so. Goodale has it right: Japan's continuing ban on Canadian beef will lead to a "shoot, shovel, and shut-up" in any other country afflicted with this problem.
It is time for Jean Chretien to put down his sushi long enough to pressure Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Korzumi into the realization that the continuing persecution of the Canadian beef industry will come with a heavy price in Canadian-Japanese relations. It is time for federal Agriculture Minister Lyle Vanclief to deliver the same message to his counterpart in Japan, Yoshiyu Kamei.
As for the Japanese, they should drop the disingenuous pretence and admit what is really driving their policy. It is not based on fear of mad cow or the human form of the disease, Creutzfeldt Jakob disease. Nor is it premised on any credible reservations about the way Canada regulates its beef industry. It is about a country trying to revive its own troubled beef industry, which has seen sales plummet in the wake of Japan's more serious outbreak of mad cow. Canada is being made the fall guy of this economic melodrama and the only real question left is whether our political leadership will let that happen.
So far, our government has formally asked their government to lift the ban on Canadian beef 49 times. We should ask again. Now that our product is back on the menu at the Japanese Embassy, what's the beef?
Author, broadcaster and investigative journalist Michael Harris can be heard Monday to Thursday, 1-3 p.m. on 580 CFRA. Letters to the editor should be sent to oped@sunpub.com
 World Fact Book (CIA)]
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