Yes, there are good businessmen in the cattle industry. I guess I should have been a little more descriptive. I have been told that the line between good ones and bad ones is going to be quite apparent this fall when this year calves go to market and farmers get paid next to nothing for their beef. The good ones will survive, the bad ones probably won't. Once again, this is all hearsay as I only half pay attention when it comes to bovine talk around me.
The problem he has is convincing said farmers to diversify out of the US market. It seems they are more willing to wait and see what happens with the border closure instead of trying to develop an off shore market for Canadian beef. This has everything to do with your point that it's easier to use the USA than go somewhere else. It is no more apparent than the farmer sitting on his hands, feeding 1000 head of cattle waiting for the gate to come up so we can ship to the US. If softwood lumber is any indication of US government policy I doubt this is going to happen anytime soon. They'll keep the borders closed for as long as it benefits their economy, and unless someone in the US steps up and says "hey, we need more beef, we're almost out" it's going to be a long wait.
When it comes to reasons "corrupted meat" wasn't sent out of Brittain, I would venture a guess that it was because the science wasn't there to back up British claims that their meat was safe for human consumption. That simply isn't the case right now: Canadian beef as a whole is has been scientifically proven to be as safe if not safer than any other beef on the planet. Even British beef, at the height of the mad cow crisis, has now been proven to be less of a threat than rabies was at the time. Were they running around shooting dogs at sight because there might be a crazy Fox Terrier loose in the countryside? Not that I can recall.
I do recall a few figures thrown around at a recent mad cow symposium put on a few months back in regards to the science behind it all:
- There were 300 000 cases of mad cow in Great Britain year to date
- of those 14 people died from what they thought could have been associated with mad cow
- of those 14 people one was a vegetarian
- during that time 22 people died from rabies
- the scientific "rule of thumb" was that if you found a single casr of mad cow in your country, it's been there for 10 years.
So, I would say that the borders are closed due to purely political reasons, and not scientific ones. If our government wasn't so inept, they might consider going to China, and proposing a thing called a "trade" with them (are you reading this Paul Martin??) anyways.....
And I'm not saying we shouldn't sell oil to the US, but only tread softly while doing it. It doesn't make sense to me to run around pillaging our natural resources to make a quick dollar, when my grandkids won't be left with anything of value 50 years down the road. I would be willing to bet the area with the most oil in the ground 2 or 3 generations down the road stands to make a fortune if they sell it then (unless of course Fotze gets off his lazy ass and makes me my Flux capacitor)
