Meat recall and me

We are currently having a bit of a crisis in Canada due to an outbreak of listeriosis due to an infected meat packing plant in Toronto. Several people across the country have gotten sick and died from the disease. The plant has been set down, there are huge food recalls and a media frenzy.

Last week, I got an email from someone affiliated with a citizen journalism site. The email they sent said "your meat photos." I had just posted a bunch of pictures from a visit to an auction mart, and thought they were referring to those.

Unfortunately, the person was actually referring to photos I'd taken during my visit to a meat packing co-op in the Philippines. The person thought that my pictures would be "excellent to illustrate the story on listeriosis."

I emailed back, telling them that the pics were taken in a coop in the Philippines and were completely unrelated to anything dealing with listeriosis, or Canada. I told them that I was a journalist and that I did not want my photos to be used for that purpose. I'm still shaking my head over this issue.

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One of the components of my job is to include stories about research that affects the agricultural industry. I like this aspect, because it allows me to be a science geek. Today I called the manager of the Lacombe Research station, which also does research into food safety and safe handling of meats in processing. I should be going down there to meet with scientists in the upcoming weeks. I'm really dorkily excited about this.

Travels in Alberta

The learning curve for my new job is pretty intense. I have to spend a lot of time driving all over Alberta, and then I have to attend events that can be very technical in nature.

Wednesday, I drove back to my old stomping grounds of Wainwright. Loyal readers will remember that my first journalism job was in Wainwright, and I lived there from 2001-2002. I learned a lot of things at that job, and covered some pretty major stories. It was a good learning experience for me. I must admit that I did not readily adapt to small-town life. I sometimes feel badly about some of the ideas and attitudes I had while I was living there. But life is a learning experience, isn't it?

Anyway, I drove into town to meet up with the marketing coordinator of Wainwright's Buffalo Adventure , who I'd met when I was living in Wainwright. She is originally from Wainwright, did her master's thesis on the Buffalo park and is only a few years younger than me. We also met up with my counterpart from the Western Producer, another agricultural paper. Jen, the coordinator, showed us a film about the buffalo park, which was one of the Canadian government's first conservation efforts. The Canadian government build a buffalo park at Wainwright, to breed and preserve plains bison. The park was in operation from 1908-1939, and some early Hollywood movies were filmed using the buffalo. It's a pretty interesting and little known piece of Canadian history.

The Buffalo Adventures are a series of agricultural tours, featuring local people and living history. You can tour an archeological dig with a professor, tour the ruins of a 100 year-old farmhouse with a local farmer (actually Jen's dad), eat homemade food at the ranch (cooked by Jen's mom and Dad), tour some fields with a farmer who explains different crops to you, and tour the Wainwright base where they kept German POWs in the 1940s.

The people of Wainwright started exploring the concept of promoting their local history back in 2001, when I was living there. I read about their Buffalo adventures in an Alberta based magazine, and was determined to do a story about it. I was thrilled, because I think it's fabulous that members of the community have embraced such a cool agri-tourism experience.

One of the highlights of our day, which included snippets of various tours, was a visit to a working buffalo ranch. The rancher, a man named Barry, took us out to visit his herd in his truck. He told us that he normally took the jeep, but that it was breeding season and his bull had charged the jeep the last time he had been out. So we all went in the truck, and stayed a distance away, just watching the herd while Barry explained the difference between wood and plains bison, and told us some other things about the animals. I learned that Syncrude, a major oil company, has a herd of buffalo that they are using to reclaim the area around the tar sands in Fort McMurray. For some reason, I found this absolutely hilarious. Barry bought a few of Syncrude's animals to add to his herd.

The big bull didn't pay much attention to us, so he must have calmed down. He rolled in front of us, but basically ignored us. Barry wanted to show us how fast the bison could run, so he honked the car and drove at them so we could get them going around in a circle. It was utterly quite bizarre.

After our tour, I drove around the town, just looking at some of the buildings. I couldn't believe how much the town had grown and changed in six years. It was absolutely amazing.

Anyway, if you're in Canada and want to experience part of the Canadian west, then I highly recommend A buffalo adventure