The Real Story Of Alberta's BSE Crisis

Want to guess who these farmers are going to vote for next time around?
PC!

The BSE crisis had several reasons. The so called "free trade", resulting in unlimited and unprotected privatization to predators like Tyson and Cargill with their huge feedlots, where cattle are being fed with the ground up carcases of dead animals and stuffed with grain, is the main reason.

This forced farmers and ranchers to jump on the bandwagon of artificial, cannibalistic feeds, hormone and steroid implants to survive. The cow that started this whole crisis was a "downer", one that collapsed and couldn't walk, which the farmer sold for about $25. to one of the feed companies for processing as cattle feed. The head was saved and, by accident, examined months later and the findings reported.

There were no, or very few, BSE cattle found in the USA, because farmers shot and buried their downers, having learned their lesson from Canada, and the authorities covered up the rest of the findings. In fact there must have been hundreds, or even thousands, but not reported. At least , this is what my American rancher friends tell me.

As I mentioned before, my cattle only eat grass, are prefectly healthy, but what happens to them after they're sold to these predators is beyond my control, because there's no market for organic beef, except on a very small and inefficient scale. Ed Deak, Big Lake, BC.

Of course they are, farmers and ranchers have been playing the role of the sucker in voting in a party who don't represent them but those who are wanting to exploit them. Quite ironic in that country people are said to stick together and help each other out.

You are right, there are organic beef farmers in Alberta too. Which while my post is long I used the example of Feed Rite which is now pushing hormone and other pharmacutical additives in its feed and feed lots. The industrialization of farming demands speed ups just like in car factories. So high yield fattening of cattle and other animals, is required to get them to market based on commodity exchange prices set in Chicago. The family farm really no longer exists in Canada as a viable farming operation as you point out. And it hasn't since the 1970's when the NFU effectively challenged Kraft Cheese with a boycott. By the 90's farming was industrialized across North America, with farmers tied to feedlots, packing plants, ADM, etc. The family farm is subsitance farming with subsidies to pay of bank debt.