I urge everyone to read the CHDC report: the painstaking attention to detail is one of the many qualities which make its conclusions indisputable, conclusions which also make it imperative that Canada pass Bill C-322 sponsored by MP Alex Atamanenko (and strongly supported by my own MP, Jamie Nicholls of Vaudreuil-Soulanges).
Next question:
Doesn't the Canadian Government oversee slaughterhouses and check for dangerous substances in our food, as well as oversee humane handling of food animals? If so, the transport of horses and horsemeat must be checked out as well, aren't they?
It is indeed the mandate (job) of the CFIA (Canadian Food Inspection Agency) to oversee the production of food from the transport of live animals destined for human consumption to their rendering into cellophane-and-styrofoamed packages for our supermarket shelves (see Part A, Definitions). However, several instances of inadequate and/or insufficient manpower and violations have been brought to public attention in the past ten years. To begin with, the low-wage positions of abattoir work tend to attract workers with minimal or no education who have had no formal training of any kind in the handling of animals before, during and after slaughter. (I just can’t see a child saying, “When I grow up, Dad, I want to work in a slaughterhouse” just like I can’t see a child saying, “Gee Mom, when I grow up I’m going to harvest human organs abroad and sell them domestically, and make lots of money”). This creates a problem for CFIA Inspectors whose job is to observe, and, when called for, intervene with a complaint (which must be written out and formally addressed), when workers are seen to be executing unsanitary, inhumane or any insalubrious behaviour which threatens the food safety of the human consumers of the animals being slaughtered.
Here’s one of the bigger problems. In an interview conducted by the CBC two years ago, the president of the union of CFIA staff stated that their executive had issued a memo to all union members warning them to remain outside the areas, such as the stun-kill box area, in which abattoir workers at Viandes Richelieu were armed with .22 rifles instead of stun-bolts (supposed to "stun" horses into insensibility prior to skinning, dismemberment and rendering into meat) because those workers were neither trained in, nor adept at, the use of such firearms, and whereby CFIA staff would be in harm's way if they were present in such areas where unskilled workers were shooting off 22's. The union president claimed not to recollect when such a memo was issued, but the CBC investigation had strong evidence that it was distributed in April 2002.
As far as the testing of horsemeat goes, unlike the meat rendered from cows and other food animals which are not tested for phenylbutazone (no need to since only horses get Bute, see Parts A and B), the testing protocols for Bute in horsemeat are conducted in such little amounts (during 5 years, samples totalling only 0.18 per cent of 385,339 horses slaughtered in that five-year period; go here CHDC,) that no assurances can be given as to the safe eating of horsemeat, particularly, since the over 60 per cent of horses we slaughter come from the US which has no protocol whatsoever in how, when, or how often US horses are administered Bute. And we know that even one dose of Bute given to a horse makes his meat ineligible for safe consumption by humans (see Food and Toxicity Report by Blondeau, Dodman and Marini, and note that, medically, all drugs leave residues which remain in the carcass after death).
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