Smart Regulation Plan A "Made In Canada Solution", Says Rep

Is this an attempt to put Canadain food production completely under US control, or a genuine attempt to put Canada on the head of healthy food producing nations?

If the latter, as a small, organic cattle producer, with approx 57 years of farming experience on both the chemical and organic levels, I would like to suggest that first of all, Canada should ban the use of GM seeds and feeds. There's absolutely no evidence that GM had reduced chemical inputs, costs and improved quality, or gains. The government can not produce a single figure, or fact excusing the use of GM seeds and feeds, because the companies are keeping all results in secret, including long term health effects. GM is nothing more than a bottomless profit pit for a few multinationals, who seem to be controlling governments on their way to control the world's food supply. If the government isn't aware of this they are either part of the racket, or ignorant of world happenings.

In the beef sector, Canada should immediately ban the use of hormone and steroid implants for cattle, cut back the use of antibiotics, also the use of ground up carcases for cattle feed.This is why we have the BSE crisis, breaking hundreds and thousands of farmers. These implants are used indiscriminately, every time the cattle change hands from one feedlot to another, often ending up with 5-6 times the recommended dosages. This has been documented by the Western Producer, among many others. There are no controls, checks, or balances to prevent this crime. Then the government is wondering why obesity and illness is blowing human medical costs out of sight, when people eat this junk meat.

Also, without these implants Canadian cattle would be welcome anywhere on Earth and the government wouldn't have to fight the EU et al, at the WTO, trying to force tainted meat on them.

Close down the huge feedlots, which are nothing more than ecological disasters, spreading pollution and illness among cattle and people, forcing the use of large amounts of antibiotics, making people and animals immune to medications.

Establish small, local meat processing plants and use feedlots only for the collection of cattle for immediate exports and processing, without long term force feeding, under strict public controls.

Does the government realize that hog farms routinely re-feed their animals with their own manure and lace their feed, also of chickens, with tons of chemicals, without any idea of their health effects on humans ? If yes, how should people feel when they're ignorantly buying hogmanure fattened pork in the supermarkets ? Why is the government silent on such elementary and well known issues, especially when Medicare can not keep up with manmade illnesses?

Ed Deak, Big Lake BC.

All good points, Ed.

I too, would wonder how much the government is aware of, and if they are improperly weighing public sentiment according to the proportion of access (lobbyists=higher). The EU constitution vote in France was a reminder: they were caught off guard, so systemic ignorance in a goverment of otherwise intelligent people is indeed possible.

Or maybe they are aware of the facts, just not the degree of public distaste for those facts.

If this new "Smart Regulation" indeed tries to improve the hook-up between regulatory bodies and stakeholders, maybe this will be a good thing. If it ends up being simply a streamlined way to connect regulators to industry-provided powerpoint slides, ideas like yours may not get accurate representation.

The business I work in depends on government regulation in order to assure quality and make the business itself worth doing. Smarter regulation would be better, I can assure you. That doesn't necessarily mean easier or cheaper for business, just more predictable. If I meet standards X, Y and Z, can I be assured that, for some stable length of time and reasonable assumed risk, I can operate my business without someone showing up and arbitrarily telling me to shut down for some reason I've never heard of? Can I be assured that some competitor cannot manipulate politics in order to operate under conditions I cannot and thus compete unfairly? Do I have to spend a large portion of my bottom line on specialized lawyers and accountants? Will this give unfair competitive advantage to larger businesses and present barrier to entry for new competitors? Will the regulations defend good business from bad, or simply grandfather in a nice crutch for some outmoded dinosaur? Is the regulation a well-defined process with clear schedules and outcomes, or an ambiguously-written trojan horse for politicians and interest groups (business or otherwise)?

Governments are part and parcel of the fraud to mislead people on the advice of their neoclassically brainwashed economists. Just saw a news item on TV, with a Canadian Food Inspection Agency official pointing out that "irregardless" (I'm not kidding) of the label on food packages saying "Product of Canada" the contents can come from anywhere on Earth. If the processing, packaging and distribution costs are 51% Canadian, the product is labelled as "Product of Canada". E.g. Spanish olives and Chinese garlic. "Grown in Canada", of course, has to be. Which is most surprising. I wonder when they'll spread handfuls of dirt around in Mexico and call it Canadian to satisfy the suckers.

What we have here is governments and politicians bending backwards to fool the public and cover up the damaging effects of this globalization fraud and crime wave.

Now, the interesting part is that, since the BSE crisis, major US companies have been buying Canadian beef at firesale prices, process them in their own plants here in Canada and sell them in the USA at huge profits. The whole racket is designed to impoverish Canadian farmers and pick up their lands for a song. I don't know whether the meat is labeled as "Product of the USA", but it wouldn't surprise me at all.
Economic competition is 90% fraud and the bigger they are the more they can get away with it, as no government dares to touch them. Ed Deak, Big lake, BC.

> There's absolutely no evidence that GM had reduced chemical inputs, costs and improved quality, or gains.

Horseshit.

Gee, and I thought I was special, as I recieved word for word the same response! I guess today was respond to the masses day.

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If I stand for my country today...will my country be here to stand for me tomorrow?

Well, prove it ! Show me one single study that has proven the benefits of GM seeds, or long term studies proving that they don't hurt the environment, or human health. They may cut back on the use of Roundup, but require more other chemicals and the farmers become literally the slaves of the makers. There are no studies published, because the corporations claim intellectual rights to keep the facts in secret and governments go along with it. By the way, why has the Bremner administration in Iraq forced through a law forbidding Iraqi farmers to use their own saved seeds, forcing them to buy US produced GM garbage? Altruism, or mindless profiteering. Ed Deak, Big Lake, BC. PS. By the way, I can outswear you, without the slightest hesitation, in several languages, so better watch it, even if you cower behind a nom de plume.

Ed, parasztgeci! - <br />
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You're the one issuing declarative statements. I just called you on it. You provide your proof that nothing good comes from GM crops. <br />
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Meanwhile, for factual background on the Green (and Gene) revolutions in agriculture, the rest of you might want to browse through this: <a href="http://www.rand.org/pubs/monographs/2004/RAND_MG161.pdf">http://www.rand.org/pubs/monographs/2004/RAND_MG161.pdf</a><br />
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Oh, for an organic beef producer, please tell us, just how much corn do your calves get fed before slaughter?<br />
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Absolutely none. My calves eat nothing but organic grass on our meadows and forest. No other feeds, no antibiotics. They have the tenderest and tastiest meat anywhere. Feeding corn is another aberration of logic, forced into cattle to put "marble" into the meat, which is nothing less than stinking tallow, but the North American public is hooked on it.

By the way, in case you don't know, "parasztgeci" means "peasantcum" or "sperm" in polite language.

I was involved in the beginning of the "green revolution" outside Cambridge in England from 1948 - 55. It was also a fraud by soaking everything in chemicals, some of the worst poisons, fertilizers etc. Killing farmworkers by the thousands and causing by now billions of cancers that didn't exist before. Back in the '30s we heard of cancers, a few people did have them, but the percentages were next to nothing. No children had cancers. I've heard of breast cancer for the first time, when we were living in Vancouver in the early '70s. Now some 30% of women come down with it. The hospitals are full of bald children after chemotherapies. Much of it thanks to the green revolution and the rest of the chemicals indiscriminally spread all over the world. I just got an item from a scientist friend about PFOS chemical found in the rainwater in Winnipeg, where there are no heavy industries. I have a 15 year old German study a doctor sent me from Sweden, 2 1/2 pages of "volatile chemicals found in mothers' milk." So figure out what it does to babies and people through their lives.

I have no intention of supplying proofs on GM seeds, google is full of it, so look it up seggluk ! Ed Deak, Big Lake, BC.

Even if GM crops worked as advertised (a point I would not so quickly concede, it is a balance sheet not an absolute), their risks and costs would still need to be weighed against these gains. Studies like the recent one concluded in Britain (proven risk to wildlife) suggest costs to many states that will be deemed too high.

And in all this health, environment and productivity back-and-forth few are properly addressing the massive concentration of control over global food supply the accompanying intellectual property affords. Face it, if it wasn't for intellectual property law, this industry would have no legs at all, or the very least a focus that was radically different and far more trustworthy.

Pro-GM poster: if you're so confident, then YOU insure these companies.

I'll restate that last point: by choosing to argue for or against the health/environmental quality of GM crops, we are a priori conceding that a system in which the global public is by-and-large willing to assume the bulk of the liability/insurance risk for an essentially private revenue stream. Oh yes, something goes wrong down the road and the first defense will be "the public approved these crops, we are not liable". If you're conceding to debate techincal merits, we've already lost the crtical part.

Look at the "debt retirement fee" or whatever your friendly-neighbourhood privatized hydro system calls the nuclear debt and insurance risk, next time you review your hydro bill--and take a hint. And let's not even go near the public funds invested in "partnership" R&D for intellectual property that eventually becomes privately owned. Enough of the touchy-feely downstream benefits: you want to sell us these, you take the liability risk. Otherwise, the public should demand a significant, voting equity stake.

And all the criticism of GM technology has to come from the left. Sheesh.

These are neoclassical, globally competitive market forces at work. As long as the GDP goes up, it makes no difference if people are starving in the streets and dropping dead from a myriad of illnesses never heard of before, to serve insatiable, corporate profit demands that overrule all logic, human rights, common decency and any concept of democracy. The statements of our braindead John Manley are perfect example of this crime wave, taught at our universities as the "competitive equilibrium of the marketplace". Ed Deak, Big Lake, BC.

Right you are, Ed, and that was my point. Tell all these magicians of the
marketplace to go insure their own damn selves, and you'll see the magic is
like all magic: illusion. No Agriculture Canada to hide behind: you want to
grow/sell GM crops in Canada, in addition to regulatory approval you *must*
carry private liability insurance from a major, solvent, underwriter, and you
will *not* be protected from class action lawsuits or free speech, regardless
of the regulatory status of your product. And you can't just move to a
sympathetic jurisdiction, either--no insurance, no imports.

I had a discussion one time with a colleague who works on invasive species
issues (note: GM crops are not covered by this department). A huge, multi-
billion dollar problem globally, with taxpayers footing the bill, not to mention
financing the emergency reserves. How about requiring private invasive
species insurance before you can park that ship? Nope. Swiss Re and
brethren would take the magic out of that marketplace pretty fast and force
some real change, just like they are with U.S. polluters and climate change.

GM foods are also peculiar in this regard: again, the whole business case
rests on the public accepting liability, just like nuclear power. The only
reason it this doesn't elicit shrill cries of socialism from the New Right is the
cash issue: we get squat for it and hold no equity, just touchy-feely (and
easily argued) "benefits". Next you'll see a proposal to publicly tax/finance a
disaster management reserve to coincide with the wide-scale approval of GM
crops, and most people will take that to mean the government is doing a
good job.

Ed, swearing is highly discouraged here, and posts containing swears or insults are likely to be voted way down and thus hidden. It would be a shame to see otherwise good posts hidden because they were crude.

Also, have you considered creating a user account? You often make quite good posts and it would be awesome to see you with a user account. If you're worried about privacy, all we really require is a valid email address, possibly on hotmail.

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Every time you complain about the moderators, god kills a kitten.

Jesse, I agree and my apologies. I didn't start the swearing, just translated what somebody called me in a pathetic effort to make point .

I have no idea what a user account is, so could you please explain ? What does it mean and what does one do with it ? If it costs any money, I couldn't consider it. Ranching is a very expensive hobby these days. Privacy doesn't bother me. I often get notes from all parts of the world, saying they enjoyed my "article in the local paper" in places I've never heard of, which I find quite funny. I write things down and from there anybody can agree, or disagree, it makes no difference to me. I came on this program on the suggestion of Mel Hurtig and find it very lively and interesting.
Ed Deak, Big Lake, BC.