As supply chain snap whips through our economy just in time for Christmas, there’s more bad news from our counterparts in Canada. “Millions of pounds of potatoes” aren’t going anywhere. They’ve been quarantined. It’s sort of like Covid for spuds. You can blame the great potato chip and French fry crisis on potato wart infection.
Crippled crops in Canada
Ray Keenan, co-owner of Rollo Bay Holdings Ltd., is trying desperately to cope with the potato wart crisis on Prince Edward Island, Canada. Ottawa ordered him to “suspend shipments of all fresh potatoes.” Every other P.E.I. farmer got the same bad news.
What’s worse, all of those tainted taters were headed here to America. Because nosy Canadian Food Inspection Agency monitors found the blight back in October, 120 million pounds of Rollo Bay’s potatoes won’t be going to American consumers.
“The reality is it’s going to take all parties to get this resolved.” That means both Canada and U.S., he told a talk show on Wednesday, November 24. “I do think it’s a bit of overkill here the way this has all happened and unwound.”
It looks like only the tip of the potato crisis iceberg. Federal Agriculture and Agri-Food Minister Marie-Claude Bibeau signed a ministerial order Sunday that seals our fate.
According to their administrative decree, seed potatoes are restricted from moving out of P.E.I. as well. “The CFIA also has temporarily suspended trade of fresh potatoes from P.E.I. to the U.S.”
Politicians and industry leaders are crying bloody murder but rainbow sock wearing Justin Trudeau isn’t listening. Canada claims if they didn’t do it on their own, Joe Biden and the imperial palace would have insisted.
No risk to humans
It’s not like potato wart will kill you. “Potato wart poses no risk to human health but decreases the yield of crops.” Because of that Canada has to disappoint American customers “down the eastern seaboard and out in the U.S. territory of Puerto Rico.”
It’s “a major interruption to the whole industry for sure, [eh],” Keenan said. The debacle “is putting ‘chaos’ into a supply chain that is ‘very joined at the hip’ with the United States.”
The Prince Edward Island Potato Board issued a statement noting “since the discovery of potato wart on the island in 2000, there has not been a single incidence in any markets — Canada or the U.S. — tied to P.E.I. potatoes.”
That makes the whole thing look like an evil Deep State plot to cancel mashed potatoes at Christmas because they’re White or something.
According to CTV News, “The two detections of potato wart in October were also found in fields already under regulation through the CFIA management plan.” That means “those potatoes were already ineligible to be shipped to any market outside of the island, including Canada and the U.S.” Another manufactured false-flag crisis. “To that point, this is a frustrating part about it, because we don’t have clear answers to what’s different now from then.”
The horrible part of the nightmare is the waste. “This isn’t canola, these are fresh perishable products, and if they don’t move and they aren’t eaten they need to be destroyed, and that would be just a horrible, horrible tragic event for such a wonderful, glorious and high quality crop here in P.E.I. this year.”
