If Nathan weren’t such an honest fellow, he would be well on his way to forging a career for himself with the likes of Greenpeace, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, or the Raelians.

Fifteen-year-old Nathan discovered what many people don’t realize: We can be made to believe almost anything. Stilted surveys and sleight-of-hand studies by special-interest groups are easy to concoct, making the truth of a matter harder to find and good science harder to follow. For this reason, Canada’s commendable position of making science-based agricultural decisions does not always play out well in practice. And we know it.

When it comes to mad cow disease, Canada is one of the few countries in the world that reacted rationally. We didn’t stop eating beef and we did not destroy our industry as did Britain in 1997. There were more than 120,000 cases of BSE but the British government did not appease consumer fears by announcing with confidence that it was not sure if people could be infected. They would have gotten the same results with technicians in lab coats sounding alarm bells and waving red flags. The British panicked and millions of healthy protein-rich cattle were destroyed.

Canada, however, made it clear from May 21, 2003, that our beef is safe. For good measure, we removed the only potential risk-materials – such as brains and spinal cord. When asked if we could be 100 per cent sure if our beef was safe, then Minister of Agriculture Lyle Vanclief wisely replied that we couldn’t be sure about a lot of things in life but that we weren’t taking unreasonable risks.

But now consumer fears, charged by environmentalist propagandists in other countries, have pressured Canada into testing more animals each year for BSE – an unnecessary action but a necessary one in the war against junk science. We should be thankful that the fanatic environmentalist morons and anti-globalization anarchists haven’t done more damage. Unfortunately that is not always the case.

An alarming moment in the court of public opinion was when Oprah Winfrey stated in 1996 that she’d never eat another hamburger. She reacted to remarks of Humane Society representative and former cattle rancher Howard Lyman, who said that mad-cow disease could "infect thousands of people" and that it "could make AIDS look like the common cold."

Some people think Oprah knows more than God. Oprah thought Lyman knew everything about mad cow and beef sales took a hit. By late 2001, a researcher estimated that 100,000 people would die in Britain from eating infected meat. That same researcher last year quietly released new estimates of the future death toll: 40. More people die in Britain each year taking a bath.

As the mad cow crisis deepened in England in 1997, it was never clearly stated that no link has been made between BSE-infected cattle and the human form of the disease. That theory is the most common, however, and I wouldn’t want to test it by eating cattle brains of infected animals. There is no doubt among scientists, however, that if you eat a steak from a BSE-infected animal you will not get sick. Alarmists cried that if Britian had only gone organic it would have avoided the BSE tragedy. But organics don’t save you from BSE. In England, BSE was found in both conventional and organic herds.

More recently, at the urging of Canadian scientists and policy analysts, Monsanto agreed not to market its genetically modified wheat for the simple reason that Europe has capitulated to the whine of extreme environmentalist emotionalism and doesn’t want genetically modified foods.

There is nothing wrong with the Monsanto product. In fact, it can increase a harvest by 5 to 14 bushels an acre. But the European consumer is frightened and 90 per cent of wheat sales is to Europe.

Recognizing the far reaching web of public opinion, Canada’s Department of Agriculture is for the first time reviewing new food products before they hit the market to determine, based on public opinion, whether they ever should see the light of day.

It is right for the federal government to take public opinion into consideration. The government should use its interpretation of consumer tastes as a recommendation and not to form legislation, which can choke the entrepreneurial spirit. The market can and will take care of itself. Companies are better at determining whether there is a market for their product than anyone else. They, after all, will be the biggest losers if they can’t sell their own product.