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Valley Watchdog: DON MAROC


With an arrogance matched only by their ignorance, Canadian politicians appear determined to prove, as have their brethren in Britain, that Mad Cow Disease creates mad politicians.
        Dreaming of launching a traditional European cheese enterprise for the Cowichan Valley, Anthea and Darrel Archer requested permission from the Canadian government to import 19 water buffalo from a registered herd of 55 living in Denmark.
        After an Oct.1999 risk assessment the Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA) issued an import permit.
        During Jan. 2000, the buffalo arrived at Fairburn Farm where they were quarantined in a barn and paddock until the CFIA tested for TB and brucellosis.
        The following month (Feb. 2000) a Danish dairy cow died of Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy - mad cow disease. The remaining 69 cattle on the Danish farm were destroyed and their brains examined. None showed any sign of the sponge-like condition that signals mad cow disease.
        It was determined that the one cow must have eaten some commercial feed meant for pigs on the same farm. Although meat or bone from any ruminant animal is banned from cattle feed in Denmark, it is still allowed in pig feed.
        The Danish authorities gave no thought to cattle on nearby farms, nor to the 36 water buffalo in a different part of the country.
        For the next eight months the CFIA kept the Archers in the dark, except an order to keep the buffalo in quarantine. On the day before the Labour Day holiday (Sept. 1, 2000) a CFIA vet delivered a letter saying the buffalo must be out of Canada by Sept. 15, or the government would have them destroyed.
        Politicians offered their sympathy but said it is out of their hands. The Archers hired a lawyer and received an extension until Oct. 13.
        Then, in a repeat performance, the CFIA vet arrived the day before the Thanksgiving holiday with two letters. The first said the original order to remove the buffalo from Canada is revoked. The second said, based upon a different section of the Health of Animals Act, the buffalo, now numbering 27, must be delivered to Lethbridge, Alberta, for destruction by Nov. 6.
        According to section 18 (1)(b) of the Act, used for the original order, if the CFIA "believes on reasonable grounds" that imported animals are contaminated by a disease they can be exported or destroyed. Knowing that the Archers' lawyer would take this case before a federal judge before Oct. 13, and feeling they had a weak case, the CFIA bureaucrats and the politicians hiding behind them moved the goal posts.
        Section 48 (1)(a) says that the Minister may dispose of an animal that "is suspected of being" contaminated by a disease.
        So now the politicians have turned this into a witch hunt. Some one SUSPECTS you of being a witch and, unless you can prove you are not a witch, you burn.
        The only way to prove the innocence of the buffalo is a scientific test for live animals. The government says the only valid test is to view slices of the brain of a dead animal under a microscope. But if you kill one buffalo and the test shows it was clean, that still proves nothing about the remaining animals.
        But wait, there is a simple, inexpensive blood test, designed by a U.S. Department of Agriculture scientist which reveals the presence of the misshapen prion proteins that destroy brain tissue in all forms of BSE. Trials have been successfully run in both the UK and US for the past 18 months but neither of those governments, nor the CFIA, well accept the test as valid. Perhaps they don't want to know the truth.
        The same government is irrational about scrapie, the BSE sheep disease. During 1997 alone they discovered 47 cases of scrapie in sixteen Ontario and Quebec flocks. They destroyed all the sheep in 10 flocks but left the rest.
        On the Prairies the CFIA found Chronic Wasting Disease (BSE in elk) in four herds. They destroyed one herd, part of another herd, and left 2 herds intact. What is their policy?
        The shift to a witch hunt by the CFIA has finally awakened our federal MP Reed Elley. Instead of privately begging for compensation he is ready to push his Alliance Party to stand up publicly in parliament and demand justice.