Loading...
The Rural Voice, 2000-07, Page 10�Oz CHRYSLER DODGE JEEP USED TRUCKS GREAT DEALS 1998 Ford Ranger XLT 2WD, 98.000 km, Auto with air & cap NICE TRUCK! 1999 Dodge Dakota Club Cab 4x4 56,000 km, sold & serviced by us since new EXCELLENT VALUE! "We bnly sell the best for less and wholesale the rest" CHRYSLER DODGE JEEP DODGE TRUCKS If you don't see what you want, ask us, we'll find it for you. Sunset Strip, Owen Sound Ontario, N4K 5W9 (519) 371 -JEEP (5337) 1-800-263-9579 Fax: (519) 371-5559 6 THE RURAL VOICE Keith Roulston Human frailty leads to regulation Deregulation is one of the more popular political trends because, after all, none of us likes being told what to do. In our drive to have more freedom, however, we can forget that often there were reasons for those odious regulations. It's often been said that a small per cent of people spoil the situation for the vast majority. We have laws against theft, for instance. not for the 98 pet cent of people who wouldn't steal anyway, but for the two per cent who will. So too, many government regulations are in place to protect the 98 per cent of people who won't cause problems from the two per cent that do. Statistically, the E. coli tragedy in Walkerton was an aberration. With hundreds of municipal water systems in Ontario, the failure of one town's system still represents a good safety record for the whole province. After all Walkerton's system represents much less than a one -per cent failure rate. Unfortunately, that one per cent took the lives of at least seven and possibly 18 people and made up to 2,000 people sick. Though it will take an inquiry to establish the causes of the tragedy, there seems little reason to suspect intentional wrong -doing. Rather, it seems to be a case that somebody thought they could fix a problem themselves, not taking into account the deadly consequences of their failure. And this is where the dream of ridding ourselves of regulations breaks down. Being without rules means each individual must make the right decision at the right time all the time. If the consequences affect only the individual, this may be a fine theory but in our modern world where each individual has more ability to affect the lives of others, the effects of a mistake are much larger and more serious. It's something that most farmers and farm organizations fail to see when they are hurt by the growing concerns of their neighbours over something farm families take for granted. We've done so much, to protect the environment, farmers reason. We live in the countryside so we wouldn't pollute our own back yard. Moreover, today's barn is probably safer than grandpa's mixed farm because it's monitored more stringently. Therefore, some argue, there's no need for regulations on large livestock operations. And for 98 per cent of barns there isn't, but the potential of damage from a two per cent failure in large barns is far beyond the potential for the failure of 20 per cent of farms in grandpa's day. Every day every farmer has dozens of decisions to make, many piled right on top of another. We see the results of that kind of pressure with dozens of deaths and hundreds of injuries every year when farmers, pressed for time, take a short cut with their machinery and get caught. The farmer and his family suffer as a result of these mistakes, but at least the damage is contained. Now take the potential to harm a far wider circle of a farmer pressed by time to apply several thousand gallons of liquid manure — mightn't he push the envelope to get the job done? Or how about the farmer with hundreds of acres of crops to spray and a limited time of ideal weather for spraying — mightn't he judge the wind not being as high as it was so he could get oti with the job? Or with prices what they are, mightn't a farmer be tempted to reduce the refuge area for Bt corn? In modern farming each individual has far greater power for harm than our grandparents thought possible. It puts the pressure on everyone not to make any mistakes. Is it any wonder our neighbours, knowing us to be human, don't have confidence that we won't make any mistakes?0 Keith Roulston is editor and publisher of The Rural Voice. He lives near Blyth, ON.