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SERVING MANITOBA FARMERS SINCE 1925 | Vol. 73, No. 44 | $1.75
October 29, 2015
Processed meat causes cancer; red meat suspected
manitobacooperator.ca
No regrets: Gerry Ritz reflects on his time as agriculture minister
Study says 34,000 cancer deaths per year worldwide are attributable to diets high in processed meat
Not everyone agrees with them, but Ritz made more changes than any minister in recent history
BY GUS TROMPIZ BY ALLAN DAWSON
Paris / Reuters
Co-operator staff
E
ating processed meat can lead to b ow e l c a n c e r i n humans while red meat is a likely cause of the disease, World Health Organization ( WHO) experts said on Monday in findings that could sharpen debate over the merits of a meat-based diet. The France-based International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC), part of the WHO, put processed meat such as hotdogs and ham in its Group 1 list, which already includes tobacco, asbestos and diesel fumes, for which there is “sufficient evidence” of cancer links.
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t’s Oct. 20 — the day after the night before — and you’d never know Gerry Ritz’s Conservative Party had lost the election or that he’ll no longer be agriculture minister in a few weeks. Canada’s 33rd minister of agriculture is his usual chipper, upbeat self, talking a mile a minute and cracking jokes, some at his own expense. “I think the biggest highlight for me was seeing (most) rural Canada painted blue,” Ritz says in a telephone interview. “So I feel very good about that. That speaks to the quality of the work we have done with the industry from coast to coast to coast. Ritz, the member of Parliament for Battlefords-Lloydminster first elected in 1997 as a Reform Party candidate, was re-elected for the sixth time in a landslide with more than 20,000 votes — 61 per cent of the ballots cast. “I think the biggest thing I am proud of (since becoming agriculture minister, Aug. 4, 2007) is expanding agriculture’s footprint at the government level — both provincial and federal,” Ritz says. Ritz, 64, a former farmer, contractor and coowner of a newspaper, kept a gruelling pace, with legislation — some of it controversial — and travelling the world more often than his predecessors promoting Canadian agricultural production. Ritz averaged just three nights at home a month during his last term. His wife didn’t want him to run again, but Ritz says he had unfinished business, including the fight to get the United States to abandon its protectionist country-of-origin labelling (COOL) law and the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) trade agreement. “Until you’ve done it you have no concept of the 24-7 on call that you are,” Ritz says. “We went global. We have expanded trade. It’s up some 77 per cent from when I took over a little over eight years ago. We’re tickling $60 billion in ag exports — the third-largest driver of GDP. It’s just a tremendous success story with more to be done.” See RITZ on page 6 »
Agriculture Minister Gerry Ritz probably made more changes to Canada’s agricultural sector than any of his predecessors. He says he’ll miss the job but welcomes more time to spend with family. photo: shannon vanraes
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