The Rural Voice, 1989-02, Page 12COMPLETE LINE OF
ANIMAL FEED
— Hog — Beef
— Veal — Poultry
— Dairy — Pet
treleaven's
feed mill ltd.
box 182, lucknow, ont. NOG 2H0
519.5283000
1.800.2653006
10 THE RURAL VOICE
TIT FOR TAT
"The Europeans have become the
bully boys of the international trading
community. They think they can
browbeat everyone else into abiding
by their rules and regulations."
— Christopher Mills
Christopher Mills, a senior official
with the Alberta Cattle Commission,
echoes precisely the sentiments of the
American administration.
But what he and the Americans
don't seem to realize is that Europeans
use the same words to describe Amer-
icans, and with equal justification.
Anyone with even a slight know-
ledge of European society knows that
European consumers don't want food
produced with hormones. A few years
ago, consumers won a resounding
victory over the powerful European
farm lobby. Their governments
decided to ban all hormone treatments
for meat animals.
Whether this is rational is beside
the point. It remains presumptuous for
Canadian and American cattlemen to
demand that Europeans change their
collective mind and their laws.
We have examples of similarly
illogical thinking in our own relations
with the U.S. Canadian farmers
periodically demand that American
food be banned in Canada because it is
grown with pesticides banned here.
Ban grapes from California. Ban corn
produced with Alachlor. When the
roles are reversed, however, our
cattlemen are furious.
There is, of course, a solution.
There always is, if one wants to find
it. Set up a program for government -
certified beef produced without the
use of Ralgro and other steroids. With
such a program, Canada could cash in
on the intransigence of the Americans
and capture some of the $100 million
market Americans just lost.
The Americans still have to leam
the lesson taught to the British over
the past 80 years: that other countries,
even if technically backwards, are not
stupid, that different standards are a
privilege of societies, that might,
whether financial or military, does not
make right, and that other countries
can, and do, make laws for their own
people which are nobody's business.
***
In the January 9 Maclean's, Diane
Francis takes a swipe at supply -
managed marketing boards. She cites
the case of Penny Trottier of Nakina in
northwest Ontario.
Trottier has been feuding with the
Ontario Chicken Board for a number
of years. She wants a chicken quota,
the only one in Northern Ontario, and
she plans a plant to process her own
and any neighbours' chickens. The
board refuses on the grounds that her
plan is not viable in her area.
Trottier got the Ontario govern-
ment to put up $120,000 for a study.
This study supported the board. On
Trottier's insistence, the results of the
study were reviewed and judged to be
wrong.
A new study, also paid for by the
government, disagreed again. But
Trottier says: It's my money, my risk,
and my right to succeed or lose all.
Francis, predictably, sides with
Trottier, making reference to "mini -
cartels within our economy" and "the
tyranny of marketing boards." "The
Trottiers' sad tale illustrates how the
system victimizes farmers too," she
says, adding "Marketing boards also
victimize consumers."
How about it, chicken producers?
Are you going to write to Maclean's
and demand a comparison with taxi
licensing, with stockbroker licensing,
with doctors, or with the myriad others
who are licensed to restrict production
and keep prices high (reasonable)?0
Adrian Vos, from Huron County, has
contributed to The Rural Voice since
its inception in 1975.