BSE impact documented in new book - Crisis left people feeling helpless

Tue Nov 29 2005

By Bill Redekop

THE BSE crisis was like a giant Waiting for Godot-type human drama for 90,000 cattle producers across Canada.

"What people suffered psychologically was the uncertainty... waiting (for normal trade to resume) and feeling completely helpless," said author Karen Emilson, who has documented the crisis in her new book, Just A Matter of Time.

The waiting lasted more than two years. It wasn't like losing a job, where you could at least collect unemployment insurance or find another job. And it wasn't like a hurricane that people can flee, or like a flood where people have weeks to prepare.

Cattle producers were completely stuck. When the discovery of a single case of BSE was made public May 20, 2003, the industry froze. No one could get out. You couldn't sell and try something new, because there were no buyers. And cattle still had to be fed.

"It was kind of like being laid off but still having to go to work every day," Emilson said. Emilson drove more than 7,000 kilometres, and also travelled by air, interviewing cattle producers across five Canadian provinces and Montana to research her book. She had to pay for transportation but rarely paid for lodgings because most families she interviewed offered to put her up in a spare bedroom.

That's the way it is in the country, said Emilson, who lived the BSE crisis with her cattle-ranching family near Vogar, in the Interlake, 175 kilometres north of Winnipeg. BSE stands for bovine spongiform encephalopathy, or mad cow disease, a degenerative disorder that affects the central nervous system of cattle.

Emilson wrote and self-published the book, starting when the BSE crisis was more than a year old. Publishers were leery about taking on the project because no one knew when the crisis would end, or if people would want to read about it afterward.

But Emilson, 42, feels the chapter in Canadian history warrants a book. "A book is a permanent thing," she said.

Producers knew right away they were in big trouble because BSE had shattered cattle industries in other countries where it was discovered, she said.

The situation cut off income and eroded savings and equity. While other people invest in stocks, ranchers invest in livestock. Suddenly, they found their "stocks" next to worthless. "But with stocks, you don't have to keep feeding them," she said.

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