Canadians Madly Buy Tons of Mad Cow Beef; "It Was On Sale!"
AIRDRIE, Alberta — Hundreds of bargain-hungry Albertans lined up in grocery store parking lots to buy cheap mad cow beef from the back of trailer trucks last week.
In less than two hours, the happy Canadians carted away almost 8 tons of mad cow beef for $1 a pound. "This is awesome," said a gleeful man, who lined up three times to by the diseased beef.
A meat manager at one store said the discounted beef will help ranchers sell beef that has had nowhere to go since the mad cow scare began in May. "It's going to help push the inventory through the slaughterhouses," he said. "It's the best thing we can do for the industry. Not so good for consumers, though."
Beef prices have been plummeting since a cow in northern Alberta tested positive for mad cow disease and international borders were closed to Canadian cattle and packaged beef.
A woman who raises cattle on her ranch northeast of Calgary said that the mad cow crisis has been particularly hard on farmers who have endured three years of drought. "We're glad we can sell some beef again," she said, and she even bought some discount ground beef in Airdrie herself. "I've got a family to feed, so I'll take whatever I can get and cut it up and put it in my freezer. She said that her husband, an engineer, just got laid off work. "He doesn't need a brain now that he's unemployed. This is probably the best beef that we are going to be eating for a while."
