Brazil’s Weak Meat Scandal a Lesson in the Fragility of Food Trust

We want our country’s import and export markets grounded by more than politics, hunches and winks. We want them to be above reproach, impervious to human contamination. We want the systems guaranteeing quality and overseeing transactions to be above board and honest

by Toban Dyck

Some trade deals are all of these things. Others strive to be. And then there’s the rest.

The global marketplace is elusive to most, and it’s full of stodgy terms that seem to confuse and overcomplicate what are, at base, simple I-buy-you-sell transactions.

In May of 2003, when the Canadian Food Inspection Agency found a single case of bovine spongiform encephalopathy in a cow from northern Alberta, 41 countries immediately closed their borders to our beef. By November of the next year, following a derby of confirmed and suspected cases here and abroad, the toll on Canadian beef producers was estimated at $5-billion.

The rumour mill surrounding this blight on Canada’s livestock industry is too toxic and unsubstantiated to print. But, distilled and edited, the reaction among livestock producers was that our beef export markets reacted in a brutish, irrational and unfair manner. The punishment didn’t fit the crime.

“Trust and standards are critical in maintaining an effective global food and agriculture system”

 

FARM TOURS

I was in Brazil two weeks ago attending the International Pork and Poultry Conference in Sao Paulo, after which I stuck around to tour farms and learn about their agriculture industry. I was fed a lot of information about their various exports.

The Brazilian Association of Animal Protein invited me and paid my way to attend the event, as part of a small cadre of international writers and journalists brought in to see, first-hand an industry that has rebuilt itself after it was brought to its knees in a matter of hours due to what it claims was the proliferation of misinformation.

The country believes that the world reacted in a brutish, irrational and unfair manner to the “carne fraca” or “weak meat” scandal — in which police raided some of the country’s largest meatpackers, amid suspicions that inspectors had been bribed to overlook tainted product.

Many countries, including Canada, immediately ceased importing Brazilian meat when the news broke early this year.

The world has been pleaded to over and over again to recognize that the problem has been fixed. Brazil has even invited any country, market, or politician still harbouring doubts to see first-hand a slice of the country’s meat sector.

Most countries have since reopened to Brazilian meat, but the fiasco speaks to the larger problem surrounding the limited access we as consumers have to the facts of such transactions.

We are not in possession of all the information. Decisions to continue a relationship or terminate it are based on fact, but not entirely. They can’t be. Trust has to play a role. Nations must work to become trustworthy.

If Canadian beef producers say there is no systemic problem with mad cow disease in its herds, they want the world to believe them and react in kind.

ACCESS

Market access is paramount to a successful agriculture sector, especially one such as Canada’s, which services a small domestic population of about 30 million people. As farmers, we rely on strong, global demand for the crops we grow.

We need the world to trust that we are delivering what was ordered. Every country has its own standards. The European Union has stringent restrictions on certain chemicals and genetically modified products that, say, China doesn’t. There are protectionist markets and ones considered on the verge.

It pays for us farmers to be aware of these differences.

Every time an international market receives a commodity container that does not comply with its specific market demands, it will get returned, a fine will most likely be issued (which is a cost that will get passed down the line to the farmer) and trust erodes. Hunches start to form.

To this end, the World Trade Organization, a group that had representation in Sao Paulo, is an important, independent player, facilitating trade agreements and settling disputes between member governments.

The soybeans I am harvesting today will get dumped onto a grain truck and hauled to our on-farm storage bins. Then, when we decide to sell, we will deliver them to our local grain elevator, which will transport them to port via one of Canada’s two main rail companies. From port, they will most likely find their way to China.

At various points in this process, inspections will take place ensuring protein levels are adequate and the general quality of the soybean is fit for the destined market.

I don’t know who all inspects, sees, receives, touches the crops I send to market. I lose sight of my product the second it’s delivered to the elevator.

I have to trust everyone down the line to not be brutish, irrational and unfair.