In the Herald yesterday:
Scotch beef is being sold in Canada for the first time in nearly 24 years.Aberdeen Angus is on the menu at steakhouse Jacobs & Co in Toronto, Ontario, making it the first Canadian restaurant to sell Scotch beef since a ban [due to mad cow disease or BSE] on UK beef imports was imposed in 1996.
https://www.heraldscotland.com/news/18125199.scotch-beef-returns-menu-canada-ban-imports/
Scotland and Northern Ireland were given Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy (BSE) negligible risk status in May 2017. The last confirmed case in Scotland was in 2002. The last case in England was in 2012. England is not due to have its status reconsidered before 2020 at the earliest.
Previously, the Scottish Association of Meat Wholesalers submitted the application for re-grading with the help of the Cabinet Secretary for Rural Economy and Connectivity. In March 2017, they noted:
‘We applaud the work done by Fergus Ewing and his officials in advancing and pursuing ‘negligible risk’ case on the industry’s behalf and look forward to being free to trade under our new status as early as the summer.’
Some readers may remember how BSE started. If not see this from Frederick A. Murphy, DVM, PhD, Dean of the School of Veterinary Medicine at the University of California in mad-cow.org:
‘In the early 1980s in England the rendering process (by which livestock carcasses are converted to various products, including protein supplements for livestock feed) was changed. Earlier, a solvent extraction step had been used to extract fats (tallow); this step was stopped when the price of the petroleum-based solvents used to extract fats went up. The infectious agent is solvent-sensitive. Otherwise, the infectious agent is extremely hardy — it can survive boiling and many disinfectants but is readily destroyed by extremely high temperature (such as in an autoclave), or by oxidizing agents, or by solvents.’
The first reported case was in West Sussex in 1986.
Given the likely source of the disease in the ‘unclean’ parts of England, Professor John Robertson, author of Dirty Globalisation: Drugs, Human Pandemics, Industrial Waste and Mad Cows, has called for a hard border with armed guards to preserve Scotland’s square sausage production chain and, of course, to prepare for Scottish independence.
Talking-up Scotland 'Albatraz' 
Great , another export that will be on the up , can we ship it through Greenock and count it as a Scottish export! .
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I’m rapidly coming round to the idea of a very hard border between Scotland and England . Johnson’s dropped workers rights, is against alignment with the EU and woopsy he’s abandoned environmental rules. Then as the Prof. says we’ve got our GM free Square saussage production to protect.
Thinking we will also need electronic counter measures to block the EBC’s Lies coming over the border.
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And here is perhaps one of the main reasons to stop putting Union jacks of food products – it tells us nothing except ‘this product might be dodgy’, if we don’t know where it comes from or where it is processed, how can we decide what risks to take – the fact that there are differences between UK countries in food hygiene controls and risk of BSE laden beef makes the uk flag anything but a mark of any standard.
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