Simply Criminal

<a href="http://www.billingsgazette.com//index.php?id=1&display=rednews/2006/01/11/build/business/45-canada-meat.inc">Report: Canadian meat imports continued despite bad inspections</a><br />n<br />n<blockquote>Two years ago, U.S. food safety officials warned that Canadian meat and poultry inspections were lacking, yet the Agriculture Department refused to stop the flow of imports from Canada, a department investigation found.</blockquote><br />n<br />nSo, Canadian meat processors don't meet the standards as required yet the <acronym title="United States Department of Agriculture, Bought and Paid for by The Big Meat Packers">USDA</acronym> continues to let them ship cattle into the US.<br />n<br />n<blockquote>The inspector general identified three big concerns with Canadian inspections:<br />n<br />n# Inspections were not done daily at Canadian food processing plants.<br />n<br />n# Canada lacked adequate sanitation controls.<br />n<br />n# Inspectors didn't sample ready-to-eat products for listeria, which can cause deadly food poisoning.<br />n<br />nDaily inspections are required at U.S. processing plants, and the law requires foreign countries to have equivalent inspections.<br />n<br />nU.S. officials halted imports from Australia in June 2004 and Belgium in 2003 because those countries didn't have daily inspections, the report says. </blockquote><br />n<br />nThe meat packers in Canada are the same meat packers in the US and since the <acronym title="United States Department of Agriculture, Bought and Paid for by The Big Meat Packers">USDA</acronym> does whatever the meat packers want, of course they allow Canada to continue to ship meat in. It's good for the meat packers and to hell with food safety. The meat packers don't care.<br />n<br />nIt's one of those things that I have never been afraid of the competition from Canadian cattle. I can handle that as long as the playing field is level. When the playing field is skewed in Canada's favor, especially when it comes to food safety, I am opposed to such things and this is one of those times.<br />n<br />n<blockquote>The Agriculture Department said it will take until 2007 to make a final decision on whether Canada's system is equivalent to the U.S. system.</blockquote><br />n<br />nThis is criminal. Continue to ship in potentially unsafe food and the <acronym title="United States Department of Agriculture, Bought and Paid for by The Big Meat Packers">USDA</acronym>/meat packers will wait until 2007 to make a decision whether it will be "okey-dokie" or not. Flat criminal, where's my noose.