rockridgecattle
Well-known member
first off here is the link
http://www.bseclassaction.ca/english/index_en.htm
Now we went to the meeting last night.
We are asked for nothing in the way of money. The Ridley Settlement is paying for the lawsuit against the Canadian Gov, and i guess Ag Canada and CFIA...from what i understood
We are asked to contact our provincial and federal MLA's and MP's to advise them to settle. With the minority Gov, and a possible election looming in the back wings, the lawyers seem to thing the Conservatives will need the rural vote to stay in power. This is where we come in by contacting them.
The government can tie this up in court and in a whole slew of things if they want to but, from the amount of paper work that they have it looks like a good case...so they say
all farmers in Ontario, Manitoba, Saskatchewn, Alberta and BC are represented in this suit. Quebec is also along but because they have different laws of federal class action, they are sort of on there own but yet working along side. Go figure, trust Quebec to...any how i digress
From the information given, it looks like when the Brits discovered and went through all the testing and came up with BSE in the mid or late '80's, CFIA and ag Canada decided to look for the imported cattle from the UK into Canada. I do not remember the exact # they were located and put on a monitoring incase of outbreak. At this point they did a good job
What they failed to do was put a stop to the rendering of these animals. And 80 made it into dead stock, rendering or deaths on farm. What the contention is, these animals should have never made it to any rendering plant at all. They should have been destroyed. There are reports that have been filed that state CFIA and AG Canada worry that BSE will now happen. that they could have prevented this, but dropped the ball. Once they realized they dropped the ball, they did not let the farmers know or recall any of the calf starter that is BSE infected cow render was in. Instead it went along tickity boo. The incubation period happened, then BSE started to turn up.
The first 4 BSE cattle found since 2003 were from this contaminated feed fed as a calf. The rest was from cross-contamination of feed.
Example is pig feed in a feed mil made with bone meal, then sort of clean the mill and then make cattle feed. The cross contamination comes from the bone meal of the infected animals rendered later on. UK studies showed in the late '80's early '90's that infected bone meal the size of grain of sand was enough to infect a calf fed this starter. The lawyers stated how do you clean so thouroughly that every spec and particle is removed? You can't. So the risk is there no matter what unless a separate mill is set up for milling ruminant feed. The first 20 months or so of life is where the damage is caused, where they are most suseptable to BSE infection. So the question became, why did the feed ban of the '90 not incompass all like the current one, when the UK had already moved to a band simillar to ours now? Had CFIA not even allowed the UK cattle to be rendered, there would not be this problem now, and they, CFIA new it when they tracked down all the UK cattle in the eighties, early '90's. There are documents to prove this.
To get all the facts and checkout the law suit go to the web site and see it all.
http://www.bseclassaction.ca/english/index_en.htm
Now we went to the meeting last night.
We are asked for nothing in the way of money. The Ridley Settlement is paying for the lawsuit against the Canadian Gov, and i guess Ag Canada and CFIA...from what i understood
We are asked to contact our provincial and federal MLA's and MP's to advise them to settle. With the minority Gov, and a possible election looming in the back wings, the lawyers seem to thing the Conservatives will need the rural vote to stay in power. This is where we come in by contacting them.
The government can tie this up in court and in a whole slew of things if they want to but, from the amount of paper work that they have it looks like a good case...so they say
all farmers in Ontario, Manitoba, Saskatchewn, Alberta and BC are represented in this suit. Quebec is also along but because they have different laws of federal class action, they are sort of on there own but yet working along side. Go figure, trust Quebec to...any how i digress
From the information given, it looks like when the Brits discovered and went through all the testing and came up with BSE in the mid or late '80's, CFIA and ag Canada decided to look for the imported cattle from the UK into Canada. I do not remember the exact # they were located and put on a monitoring incase of outbreak. At this point they did a good job
What they failed to do was put a stop to the rendering of these animals. And 80 made it into dead stock, rendering or deaths on farm. What the contention is, these animals should have never made it to any rendering plant at all. They should have been destroyed. There are reports that have been filed that state CFIA and AG Canada worry that BSE will now happen. that they could have prevented this, but dropped the ball. Once they realized they dropped the ball, they did not let the farmers know or recall any of the calf starter that is BSE infected cow render was in. Instead it went along tickity boo. The incubation period happened, then BSE started to turn up.
The first 4 BSE cattle found since 2003 were from this contaminated feed fed as a calf. The rest was from cross-contamination of feed.
Example is pig feed in a feed mil made with bone meal, then sort of clean the mill and then make cattle feed. The cross contamination comes from the bone meal of the infected animals rendered later on. UK studies showed in the late '80's early '90's that infected bone meal the size of grain of sand was enough to infect a calf fed this starter. The lawyers stated how do you clean so thouroughly that every spec and particle is removed? You can't. So the risk is there no matter what unless a separate mill is set up for milling ruminant feed. The first 20 months or so of life is where the damage is caused, where they are most suseptable to BSE infection. So the question became, why did the feed ban of the '90 not incompass all like the current one, when the UK had already moved to a band simillar to ours now? Had CFIA not even allowed the UK cattle to be rendered, there would not be this problem now, and they, CFIA new it when they tracked down all the UK cattle in the eighties, early '90's. There are documents to prove this.
To get all the facts and checkout the law suit go to the web site and see it all.
