Cargill's Impending Takeover Of Better Beef

"We need more competition not less and we must keep our packing plants under Canadian control if we are ever to remain independent of the U.S. cattle industry lobby."

I have preached this since 1995 and all I ever got from cattlemen and Farmers is that the markets of the United States and Canada were so integrated that they, the Americans would never desert or abuse us Canadians.

Well, guess who was wrong? Now we have the politicians and Industries Executives coming out of the wood work saying Canada has to start working with the American system. Isn’t that what got Canada into this mess in the first place?


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Perception is two thirds of what we perceive reality to be.

Difficult decisions are a privilege of rank.

Cargill should not be able to take over "Better Beef". We need more competition not less. If Cargill gets too big they will have too much control of the beef prices and that won't be good for anyone. We all saw how they treated farmers during the BSE crisis.

You guys demand "free trade" access to the US market for beef products, and then demand protection from foreign investment for these self-same industries?

Do you begin to see why Canadian self-righteousness is not taken too seriously down south?

" Isn’t that what got Canada into this mess in the first place?"

No. Feeding brains to your cows started the whole mess.

Not pleasant, but the truth.

Canada prohibited feed being produced and sold in Canada containing these animal parts in 1995 against protests from the United States Government.

As a result American feed containing the animal parts that couse BSE was not baned from Canada until the end of the 1990's because of the NAFTA agreement and according to the United States Government and the U.S. Cattle Industry it was not proven to couse BSE.

Once BSE was discovered in Canada then American feed containing animal parts already baned in Canada was then aplied to American feed.

The United States of America did not put its own ban into effect until BSE was discovered there.

So why until now has it not shown up in the United States of America?





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Perception is two thirds of what we perceive reality to be.

Difficult decisions are a privilege of rank.

You're talking about two different things, trade is not investment and they don't go hand in glove. What Americans call investment is really economic take-over of a country, which is nothing new, as you yanks have been doing this for just about a hundred years now. Anyone who doesn't believe this just has to look at the IMF, WTO, and World Bank, which you yanks have using for years to basically bankrupt countries by recommending huge loans based on falsely inflated economic reports and then when countries can't repay use the IMF to require them to "open up their markets," a code word for let Americans come in and buy up all your industries. Anyone who wants the whole story of how this was accomplished should read "Confessions of an Economic Hitman" by John Perkins who was an insider working for a consulting firm called Chas T. Main and who was the chief architect of such deals and author of said reports.

So you see, it is not a matter of self-righteousness but a matter of we don't trust you; nobody in the world does at this time and quite rightly given the economic destruction your country has created.

As well, Americans talk a good game about free trade and market economics but the fact is the US is about the most protectionist country with regard to trade right now and have been so essentially since its birth. Americans always talk about other countries' obligation to let their companies in but they never talk about their own history of keeping foreign competition out until their own domestic industries were well-established; very hypocritical for the US to demand that foreign sovereign states dismantle protection for their own budding industries.

Next time, please do a little research of your own history and you might be in a position to make an intelligent comment.

"Locally, small independent packers have closed being unable to compete."

Further to this, the small local packer concerned had a fire in the plant that destroyed much of his processing capability. He was unable to see a viable reason for rebuilding despite considerable local support, apparently he was unable to get much support from governments despite the fact that the 'big boys' had been receiving major financial inputs from governments to 'expand their packing capabilities' in order to 'support the cattle farmers' hit by the ban on cattle exports due to BSE. Whats wrong with this picture?



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When you are up to your ass in alligators it is difficult to remember that the initial objective was to drain the swamp

You *are* aware that there are multiple groups in Canada, and even multiple individuals, who demand different things at different times? And even on this one website, we have people representing different viewpoints? Not everyone agrees on every issue. Surprise!

In case that's not clear, I'll spell it out; the people demanding free-trade access to US markets are not the same people who demand protection from foreign ownership.

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