Testing of beef carcasses was fiercely resisted but remains the ‘what if’ legacy of the BSE outbreak
Anumber of media outlets, including some big-city daily newspapers, have been commemorating the 10th anniversary of the outbreak of BSE in Alberta. It’s an anniversary that I expect most folks in the cattle industry who were adversely affected by this calamity would rather forget.
But it is somewhat curious to see urban newspapers run stories with thousands of words covering the minutia of what happened back then. True to form, most of the stories carried the words “mad cow” prominently in the headline as if once again trying to sensationalize the issue with such provocative words. After all these years it seems that headline can still be the story.
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What is of interest with many BSE stories make almost no mention of the raging controversy that has dogged the issue for most of the past 10 years. The controversy that was so prominent at the time was the use of universal BSE testing in mitigating the impact on most beef export markets. Such testing was fiercely opposed and blocked by the Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA). To many, it remains a black mark on that government agency. In retrospect, the devastating impact of BSE on our offshore beef export markets could have been greatly reduced had common sense and precedents been followed. Sadly it took almost eight years before an ALMA marketing study confirmed that universal BSE testing would have made a difference in mitigating the impact on those exports. One shudders to think how different it all would have been if not for bureaucratic obstinacy and arrogance.
It all boils down to the unfortunate reality that when it comes to so many agriculture industry issues, our bureaucrats insist that we repeat history and BSE was perhaps the classic example of that insanity. It seemed from the very beginning of the outbreak that both the CFIA and U.S. Department of Agriculture were convinced that this was the first such outbreak in the world and they would have to deal with it in their own way. This attitude seemed most disconcerting to most other observers since BSE and its marketing repercussions had been going on in the U.K. and Europe for almost 10 years. Sheer common sense would have screamed that perhaps our government response might learn something from the European BSE experience. After all by their own admission, European authorities and governing politicians had made all the mistakes, but having learned were on the track to beef-marketing recovery. Apparently that mattered little to our own experts and agencies, who were determined to repeat history.
What the Europeans had learned was that science was not always the best way to deal with a public perception issue. Which is why after almost losing their beef market to suspicious consumers, they decided that regardless of the science and testing efficacy that they would begin a universal BSE-testing program across the EU for all beef carcasses. That critical move silenced a rabid media and relieved consumer fears about beef safety. The result was an almost immediate return of consumer confidence for the simple reason that they believed universal testing made their beef safer. Whether it was scientifically correct or effective to do so did not matter, it was a matter of perception and it worked. Sure, more cases of BSE were discovered in Europe with such an extensive testing program. But consumers felt that every new case was one less case of contaminated beef in the system. Interestingly, the discovery of more cases was viewed by the European media and consumers as a positive revelation that their universal system was working.
Contrast this to North America and its restricted and selective BSE-monitoring and -testing program, where every new BSE case was viewed as another disaster and death blow to the beef industry.
North American government agencies, the processing industry and government politicians also claimed universal BSE testing was impractical and too costly. Costs of $100 per test were cited along with a logistical nightmare for processors. My own investigation in Europe found that costs were more like $20 and falling, and that private enterprise had found a very efficient way to process thousands of samples virtually overnight. It could have been done here and export markets like Japan who had their own universal BSE-testing program might have opened a lot sooner. In retrospect when one considers the billions lost in export sales and billions of taxpayer dollars spent in subsidies, universal testing would have been a bargain. But alas, it’s all history now.
Alberta did gain some positive results from the outbreak, we did establish a world-class prion research institute at the University of Alberta and a veterinary college was established at the University of Calgary. Much of the credit for that goes to our own Iron Lady, Shirley McClellan, who was the ag minister at the time of the BSE outbreak.
Finally and ironically, it would seem that there now appears to be a government planning document that states that if there ever is another future major outbreak of BSE in Canada, that all beef will be universally BSE tested for domestic and export markets. It would seem that history in this case may not repeat itself. Too bad we had to learn the hard way.
