Another case of BSE or mad cow disease was revealed yesterday to have been discovered in Canada. And didn't our puppet Secretary of Agriculture just murmur something along the lines of, "Nothin' gonna change, bahse, nothin' gonna change...we got us a deal."

Yup, they have a deal all right. Canada can do whatever they darned well please in regard to inspections (see Thoughts From the Middle of Nowhere, January archives on this). The folks from other nations who used to buy our meat can run scared because of the incredible carelessness of a meat packing company with its offices right here in NY, our industry can lose the trust of our local customers too, but we got us a trade deal with Canada, so nothin' is gonna change.

It makes me so mad. The markets we American producers depend upon for survival are being buried in imports, often illegal, (as in the case of milk protein concentrate, hauled in without tariffs to make cheese,) that are not produced under the same standards to which we are held. Our government spends a fortune checking up on us; here at Northview we have sometimes been under the thumb of as many as five different milk inspectors at one time. They regulate us to death and even expect us to dig into our own pockets to pay for it, as in the ongoing argument with the EPA over them coercing dairy farmers to monitor their own air emissions and even pay a fine up front.

Then they cook up deals, wherein any body who can do it cheaper or who can benefit big agribusiness consortia, even many that are based overseas, can import materials that were never subjected to those strictures. Thus we often get to pay for the privilege of putting ourselves out of business, while foreign entities sell our customers inferior and even downright unsafe products. Grrrr.....