Feed recalled meat to animals? Oh, that makes sense

Be reassured people. Everything is under control in the aftermath of the tainted meat scandal.

Paul Mayers, a senior manager at the Canadian Food Inspection Agency, says some of the recalled meat might be fed to animals. "I'm not suggesting that that is an option in this case. When product is recalled, then a range of options can be employed," he said, including destruction. However, he added:

"Product may go to rendering ... and through rendering, then that product can be reworked, the listeria would be destroyed and that product could then be used in the production of animal feed provided that the product meets our requirements."

Hmmmm. Feeding rendered meat to animals. Haven't we heard something about that before? Didn't I get on a plane to go to Alberta to cover BSE in that province? Or is mad cow disease no longer associated with animals eating animals?

I'm probably not the only one scratching my head in the fallout of the listeriosis outbreak. So many lapses in logic. It would be almost comical if people weren't dying and getting sick and families not worried about feeding children.

I could swear I heard Maple Leaf Foods spokesperson Linda Smith saying Maple Leaf Foods found positive swabs for listeria in their Toronto plant earlier in the summer, but that samples tested negative after the area had been thoroughly sanitized. So tell me why wasn't there a recall then? Is it because "positive results for listeria inside a food plant" are common? That's what CEO Michael McCain told reporters at yesterday's press conference, simultaneously declining to give details on listeria having been found at the Toronto plant. He did stress, however, that nothing was found "out of the norm" prior to the outbreak.

He's apologized and taken the blame for Maple Leaf, insisting it wasn't the fault of federal or provincial inspectors. A cynic might attribute that seemingly noble approach to a desire to avoid even further costly and time-consuming inspection hassles in future. But let's not be cynical.

If McCain won't give details on listeria swabs and won't say there should have been a recall, what is it exactly he's taking blame for? He said regulators weren't to blame, but stressed they were made aware of all test results and procedures at the Toronto plant. That seems to shift responsibility back to the regulators. What should Maple Leaf have done? McCain says it's hopeless to test all the meat:

"If you had a box of cereal and you took one tablespoon of cereal out of that box you would more than likely get a negative result, even though a bacteria may exist at the bottom of the box," he said. "It's like looking for a needles in a hay stack."

Where does that leave us? You can't test all the meat but apparently it's not reliable to test the environment at the plant either because positive results are common. Bummer. Overall, McCain seems to be moving to the maybe-we'll-never-know approach.

If they can't do better than that, maybe the public should take the maybe-we'll-never-eat-processed-meat approach.

A postcript: McCain swears he's not, but it sure sounds as if he's listening to lawyers. Or am I being too cynical?

Arctic gold, diamonds, natural gas and oil - YEEHAW

Reuters Photo

Harper in the Canadian Arctic

It's hard to ignore a gold rush. Add diamonds, natural gas and oil and look out.

In a summer during which everyone has been looking north to the Arctic with dollar signs spinning over their eyeballs, Prime Minister Stephen Harper joined the rush this week with a trip to the Arctic himself to, among other duties, announce Canada will spend $100 million to map the mineral resources of the north. Now, on a grander scale most of this work has already been done by the United States Geological Society (USGS) that mapped the entire Arctic to estimate in July the area north of the Arctic Circle contains 90 billion barrels of undiscovered oil and 30 percent of undiscovered natural gas. Development of such reserves, according to USGS estimates, could meet current world oil demand of 86.4 million barrels a day for almost three years.

Derek Burney, a tough political strategist on the Conservative scene who's now studying U.S.-Canada relations, wants Canada to get more involved in the Arctic, advising that increased traffic through the Northwest Passage as a result of global warming carries commercial and security opportunities for both countries. He doesn't talk about the downside for our world - and particularly for future residents of the planet - of rapidly melting ice caps and glaciers. It's a business opportunity.

Harper appears to agree with Burney. While the PM talked today about environmental concerns, he spoke about the "proliferation of international shipping in the north" as a done deal, rather than an environmentally precarious event that Canada should be working to moderate as much as possible. Sure, Harper said Canada wants to enforce anti-pollution rules, but that's what they all say before all-out development goes hog-wild. You don't do the sophisticated mapping of resources if you don't plan to be drilling, excavating and carrying tonnage through fragile Arctic waters at a hasty clip.

Last night on The National, the CBC showed a map to accompany a report on Harper's trip north. It looked like a set for Let's Make a Deal, with gold appearing on one part of the north, diamonds on another and oil and natural gas sites marked in the fragile northern seas.

Warnings from environmentalists appear to be unheeded. Not to worry, says USGS director Mark Myers. He stressed before any decisions can be made about "protection of endangered species, native communities or the health of our planet, we have to know what's out there."

Like Cassandra, environmentalists are left to warn of risk to Arctic residents, as well as the world's population and generations to come, if they come. Not to mention the natural world. Tony Clarke, executive director of the Polaris Institute in Ottawa, says development in the Arctic is akin "to playing with fire as far as nature is concerned." Andrea Harden-Dolnahue, energy campaigner for the Council of Canadians, believes it is critical to conduct social and environmental impact studies before "rushing into an energy gold rush."

Famous last words.

And remember, for oil alone, we're talking about only a three year supply from the development of all the undiscovered oil resources in the entire Arctic, of which Canada has only a fraction.

Tainted meat at Maple Leaf: Where's old man Schneider when you need him?

Well, I guess JM Schneider has left the smokehouse. At Maple Leaf Foods, CEO MIchael McCain has apologized for the tainted meat related to the outbreak of listeriosis, saying his company will do better in future. Perhaps it's time for advertisers to do better by giving consumers a break.

You've probably seen Schneiders' folksy TV ads that feature a smokehouse employee who says his wife always complains about the smell in this clothes - but, hey, that's the price of quality. The ad is shot like an old-time news reel showing employees working together and the old man himself saying nothing but the best gets past him. Okay, nobody thinks it's a genuine 1920s newsreel, but we do at least expect Schneiders meats come from a Schneiders plant where, in a modern age, employees show the same dedication as in the past. That's the point of the ad: times change, dedication remains the same.

But no. We find out with this tainted meat scandal at least some of Schneiders meat comes off assembly lines at the Maple Leaf plant in Toronto. It's the plant linked to meats contaminated with the listeria bacteria, with Schneiders products on the recall list.

Probably it would be tough to prove lack of truth in advertising in the Schneiders ad. They could argue nobody thinks biting into a piece of gum produces a river of water either. But the ad shows Schneiders meat being prepared at a Schneiders facility - and that's the minimum a consumer should be able to expect. Otherwise, in my book, it's false advertising.

On other fronts too, these awful events have been telling.

If I had any doubts about how the elderly and infirm are being fed in Canadian nursing homes, I don't anymore. They're eating a lot of processed meat.

Ontario has already been hit with stories this year about abuse and neglect in nursing homes in the province and this story confirms most of the 12 people who have died to date fell ill in these facilities. Everybody - and especially older people - require good nutrition. Personally, I don't eat processed meats because I don't like the taste and I know they aren't doing much for me nutritionally. I can't imagine they can be much more for seniors. (And there's the obvious fact some are lethal.)

It was also interesting yesterday to hear Maple Leaf spokeperson Linda Smith saying in a radio interview the Toronto plant was scheduled to reopen today, but that it wouldn't unless they were 100 per cent satisfied everything was safe. Later in the day, Agriculture Minister Jerry Ritz pointed out it's the government's call when the plant reopens, and not the company's.  Ms. Smith didn't mention that.

That would be the agriculture minister we're talking about, which begs the question: Where's Tony Clement? The answer is easy: the health minister is in Denver at the Democratic National Convention. The better question is why.

There's kind of a health crisis at home, or doesn't Clement think parents worried about what to put in their children's mouths is a health problem? Sure, there's a role for the agriculture minister, but I'd feel a lot better if the health minister was doing the heavy lifting here. But I've got a hunch his staffers (and/or the PMO?) keep him on a pretty tight leash.

Let me give you an example. Recently, I wanted to talk to Clement about the concerns of Canadians about cellphone safety, as well as the links between the telecommunications lobby and health and industry officials who make regulatory decisions for cellphone use. But I was out of luck. A health ministry spokesperson got back to me to say she didn't feel "too comfortable" having the minister comment on a "scientific" issue.

Funny, he handled the SARS crisis in Ontario well enough.

Blogger on Olympic R'n'R

So much for my idea of keeping my blog going while on holidays. I'm afraid I haven't done a very good job.

I'm going to do the smart thing and sign off the Political Decoder until I'm back at work next week. My goal these days is to inhale all the fiction I haven't been able to read all year and watch as much of the Olympics as I can squeeze in, usually at 4 a.m. But I doubt readers are interested in my grouchy opinions of Olympic commentators. If the CBC's diving expert tells us one more time the judges may not be able to see the errors she's noticing because they don't have the same slo-mo technology, I'm going to be ill. And how many times per minute does the gymnastics commentator believe she needs to explain the scoring system to us. What are we, idiots?

Go online, you say. More choice. Sure, but then I have to watch the Air Canada commercial every two seconds on the CBC site. You know, the one where cleaners, mechanics, flight crews talk about how special it is for them to serve Olympic athletes — leaving me seething over how us regular schlubs get treated. Oh, and one more thing, that Bombardier commercial with happy folks around the world singing along to "O Canada" in various languages? Yuck!

You see, reading my blog this week would be no fun at all.

Instead, I will leave you will a new photo of a reader's dog, Chewy, who's into sleeping with her mouth open — and sign off until next week.

Hmm, guess I'm guilty of my own yuck quotient. Sorry, Chewy, you're adorable.

Are Canadian athletes too "Canadian" to win Olympic medals?

Toronto Star Photos

Alex Baumann returns to Canada in 2006.

I marvelled at the against-all-odds performance of the U.S. men's swim team in the the 400-metre freestyle relay earlier this week. It was made for Hollywood, with American anchor Jason Lezak coming from behind to beat France's Alain Bernard to take the event. It was simply delicious, with all the elements of drama from Bernard's prior arrogant comment that France would "smash" the U.S. team to his mistake in the pool. It gave the Americans a victory and kept alive phenom Michael Phelp's much hyped drive for eight gold medals at a single Olympics.

Watching it, I wondered what it is in the U.S. diet that keeps producing these kind of miracle plays. Not that it's never happened for Canadians, but the Americans seem to pull off these amazing results as a matter of routine, living out fairytale scripts. Then, I picked up the current issue of The Walrus and read Katharine Dunn's great piece, "Sink of Swim: Pierre Lafontaine's bid to revive Swimming Canada." I'm not even going to check if I can pull the article down for you because the September issue is on news stands now, and the magazine industry needs all the help it can get.

As a teenaged swimmer from Nova Scotia, Dunn choked in her backstroke event at the Canada Games in Saskatoon. She remembers the starter's gun going off, glancing at the girl in the next lane who was already ahead and thinking: "I don't want this badly enough." Dunn extrapolates to examine the decline of Canadian swimmers since the medal performances of Alex Baumann and Victor Davis in Los Angeles in 1984. In Athens, the Canadian team collapsed. In looking at the problem, Dunn observes:

"What has happened to the national swim team at international meets since the 1980s is a version of what happened with my Canada Games teammates in Saskatoon. Pitted against apparently stronger, richer rivals, do Canadian athletes shrink? Do we, as (former Canadian coach Dave) Johnson suggests, buckle under pressure? More problematic, do we suffer from some sort of national inferiority complex?"

A very interesting point. The article works on many levels. Dunn's experience as a Maritimer explores, without a megaphone, the Canadian dynamic and our own internal inferiority feelings region-to-region. She describes the plans new Swimming Canada CEO Pierre Lafontaine has for rebuilding, as well as the decision by the Canadian Olympic Committee to hire Baumann from Australia in 2006 as executive director of the Road to Excellence program for summer sports. Baumann has long made the point — as he did again this week from Beijing — that it's too soon to see the results of new government funding. Baumann wants the bulk of money for athletes to come from the federal government, a belief Dunn shows is not shared by some U.S. coaches. During the 2004 Olympics, American Murray Stevens described Canada's approach to swimming as "socialist," later telling Dunn handouts don't help athletes. "The more you get from the outside, the less you work for it," he told her. "Mother bird can only help little bird so much."

Dunn asks whether Canadian athletes need to "shake off their own culture" in order to ascend to the podium.

Everybody hopes Canada will win medals in Beijing, however Dunn's article is a must-read. It's a starting point for debate about what's wrong, if indeed anything really is wrong with the Canadian sports system.

A footnote on the swimming events: While we all appreciate how well Canadian swimmers have done in beating their own best times (and there's no doubt they've done this), hearing it so often from the athletes themselves, one wants to shout out: "Yes, but you're not in Kansas anymore."

Plus, the award for more realistic line from a TV anchor: Coming back from Global's report on the Chinese tricks at the opening ceremonies, Kevin Newman laughed and said it didn't seem to be a big problem. As he sees it: "We all know TV is all smoke-and-mirrors."

Nicely put.

Finally, I apologize for the sporadic postings. I'm on holidays, and now back to the Games . . .

Ontario "pill pack" cuts increase risk of drug error, says pharmacist

I guess pill packs are just not a sexy issue. Not unless you're elderly, living on a fixed income and tied to taking several medications a day — but what kind of political clout do you have then?

Evidently not very much.

Since the Ontario government cut funding for pill packs under its drug plan a couple of weeks ago, there's been little public reaction. Pill packs are those handy plastic containers that keep different medications in clearly marked compartments. They are particularly important for seniors who are trying to live on their own. Under new regulations effective Aug. 1, Ontario will pay the $8 dispensing fee for only twice monthly (with limited exceptions) — a decision critics argue will help push seniors into nursing homes. Health ministry official Helen Stevenson told the Toronto Star the new policy was carefully studied before implementation.

But problems with the new policy are deeper, according to Kichener pharmacist Scott Hannay, who wrote to me after a recent story on the policy change:

 

"Thank you for writing your article (July 30/08) bringing the issue to the public's attention. I share the frustrations with some of the readers who have commented on the article. Our pharmacies supply a large number of retirement home residents with a version of a weekly pill pack. The new regulations will have a huge impact for those seniors who have a nurse administer their medications in a retirement facility (which unlike nursing homes are unregulated by the government and are not exempt from the laws). By eliminating compensation for preparing medications on a weekly basis pharmacies will stop offering this service. This will shift the task of organizing and preparing medications to the nursing staff and will result in less time to spend with the residents and much higher chance of errors in dispensing. There's also the issue of community psychiatric patients who are dispensed their medications in limited supply to monitor their compliance and reduce risk of overdose. By having some medications exempted from the regulations (like antipsychotics) Helen Stevenson has given the impression that she has put some thought and political posturing into this but the fact is that it is far easier to have a lethal overdose on blood pressure medication than it is on sleeping pills. Ironically drugs to treat Alzheimer's Disease are not on the exempt list (those who need compliance packaging the most to keep up their independence before the eventual placement in an LTC facility).

If it is decided that a person needs help organizing and monitoring their medications (by the doctor, patient and pharmacist together) I feel the taxpayers of Ontario would support the government continuing to pay for this service (which I have figured out based on our pharmacy's patient population works out to about $250/yr).

Scott Hannay
Medical Centre Dispensary/Williamsburg Pharmacy
Kitchener, ON.

Mr. Hanny had no objection to my publishing his views. Such concerns apparently weren't top of mind for the health ministry making the changes.

 

Rob Schneider: drunken crusader

The cause we've been waiting for: 

Bottled Great Lakes Water: Will That Be Flat or Sparkling?

Carlos Osorios, Toronto Star

Lake Michigan.

The Great Lakes-St. Lawrence River Basin Water Resources Compact is on the verge of passage in the U.S. Last week, it whizzed through House and Senate committees and is expected to pass the full Congress in the fall. It was praised publicly by President George W. Bush. All this has happened in record time in the two weeks since I wrote about the few lonely voices opposing this bill on both sides of the border. While they raise the alarm, the big victory of the bill's proponents is that they have brought most environmentalists on side because it's been sold as a way to stop bulk exports and water diversion.

That it does. Or does it? The devil, so to speak, is in the details. The huge problem at the core of this bill is that it officially turns Great Lakes and St. Lawrence River basin water into a "product," and that is a weighted word in international trade circles. (Ontario and Quebec signed on with the eight U.S. Great Lakes states in a separate agreement that mirrors the U.S. bill.)  Slipping a poison pill into a bill or treaty is an old negotiating tactic. Opponents, including powerful American environmental groups, had been fighting this compact for several years and were so relieved to get an exemption for bulk water exports, they heralded it as a victory. With that as a guarantee, what could go wrong? It was only those few free trade watchdogs, primarily the Council of Canadians, who understood what happens in freetradeland because they monitor trade issues, and have been since the Free Trade Agreement with the United States in 1989. As well, Michigan lawyer James Olson fought the bill based on the constitutional argument of water as a public trust.

Commodities/products can be traded freely and, since there is no special protection for water in NAFTA, opponents fear corporate interests — bottling companies, for instance — will attempt to use Great Lakes water for profit and fight any naysayers on the basis of free trade law. Probably, they have a good case; that's the scary part. It's important to note the 1994 North American Free Trade Agreement did not protect water. Neither did the FTA or anything signed through GATT or the World Trade Organization.

NDP MP Peggy Nash (Parkdale-High Park), her party's water critic, argues "treating water as a product undermines what ought to be held as a public trust." Although Nash says, "I don't know if the U.S. is particularly interested in the opinions of Canadians," it's important for people who oppose water-as-product to make their views known to the U.S. Congress. It's not too late to lobby, she says. "The Americans have got to get this one right." It will be too late once that first court ruling (in either Canada or the U.S.) allows the export of bottled water from the Great Lakes because, to do otherwise, would supposedly harm free trade among nations.

It's also worth noting that free-trade rationale was probably what the Conservatives had in mind when the Canadian delegation derailed a recent resolution of the U.N. Human Rights Council in Geneva to make water a basic human right. Why do that when you can sell it? For  those who argue Canada should be allowed to sell its water and benefit from the sale, be warned, once commercial interests are involved, the coming drought may be playing in a theatre near you.

Summer treat: a blooming Canadian icon

TORONTO STAR PHOTO

Ed-like blooms

Today let me sing the praises of Ed Lawrence. He's on local CBC radio in Toronto every Monday (Tuesday on holiday weeks) to talk about gardening. Formerly in charge of the grounds of Ottawa's Official Residences for the National Capital Commission, he's written several books, the latest being, Gardening Grief and Glory.  He's a very sly man. The topic for his call-in show is gardening and, sure, he takes questions from listeners across Ontario  about their horticultural hassles. But he doesn't fool me. He's not talking about gardening at all; Ed Lawrence is talking about life.

If I were to have a life guru, it would be Ed Lawrence. On dark winter days, he reminds me the natural world is invisibly gathering its strength for the rebirth to come, and it cheers me. He reminds me there is continuity to life, just as there is to the seasons. That sounds simple enough but, without Ed Lawrence, I tend to forget. He's like my grandmother's cup of tea; he makes everything seem better. He describes the long nose of a certain garden weevil with the same wonder and gusto as the first glorious blooming of the lilac tree in springtime. No matter how arcane the topic, he always seems to have an answer or — and how often does this happen with most experts? — he says he doesn't know and will find out. That happens maybe once a year. He makes me believe I can make things grow — and I find I can. Sometimes he describes the fruits of a garden — a splash of colour from crimson-coated onions in a summer salad or the special taste of the bitter dandelion leaf — with the joy of someone seeing and tasting for the first time. And there's always a nugget to take away from his show and savour. Today's was: "There are some things we just shouldn't worry about that much." He was talking about long-nosed weevils — or so he said.

I don't often get a chance to listen to Ed Lawrence, at least not the whole show. But this week, and for a couple more to come, I'm off and my time is my own. I don't want to let this blog go for three weeks — not when it's so much fun — so I will continue to post. It just won't be as regular (sorry about last week) and I will slip in a few more personal favorites. It is summer.

One last thing: I say an Order of Canada for Ed Lawrence. Pass it on.