Only after the last tree has been cut down.  Only after the last river has been poisoned.  Only after the last fish has been caught.  Only then will you find that money cannot be eaten.

"When an activity raises threats of harm to human health or the environment, precautionary measures should be taken even if some cause and effect relationships are not fully established scientifically. In this context the proponent of an activity, rather than the public, should bear the burden of proof." - Wingspread Statement of the Precautionary Principle.

Humour

The wisdom of the Dakota Sioux, passed on from generation to generation, says that, "When you discover that you are riding a dead horse, the best strategy is to dismount."

However, in today's government and in big corporations and institutions, more advanced strategies are often employed, such as:

  1. Buying a stronger whip.
  2. Changing riders.
  3. Appointing a committee to study the horse.
  4. Arranging to visit other countries to see how other cultures ride horses.
  5. Lowering the standards so that dead horses can be included.
  6. Reclassifying the dead horse as living-impaired.
  7. Hiring outside contractors to ride the dead horse.
  8. Harnessing several dead horses together to increase speed.
  9. Providing additional funding and/or training to increase dead horse's performance.
  10. Doing a productivity study to see if lighter riders would improve the dead horse's performance.
  11. Declaring that as the dead horse does not have to be fed, it is less costly, carries lower overhead and therefore contributes substantially more to the bottom line of the economy than do some other horses.
  12. Rewriting the expected performance requirements for all horses.
  13. Promoting the dead horse to a supervisory position.

A short history of Canadian agricultural policy:

  • Get big or get out

  • Get bigger or get out

  • Get out.

A short history of agriculture (from Prof. Dick Levins):

“...nonfarmers learning how to make money from farming.”

Another characterization of agriculture policy:

“As the system is currently structured, farmers are just the hamsters in the wheel that powers an expanding agribusiness empire.  And government’s solution to the farm crisis is for the hamsters to run faster.”    (NFU report: The Farm Crisis, Bigger Farms, and the Myths of ‘Competition’ and ‘Efficiency’, November 2003, p. 18.)
 

...using common sense towards healthy food from healthy animals

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