Paula Simons: Leadership required in debacle.

struggled back from the economic devastation caused by bovine spongiform encephalopathy: mad cow disease.

Did we learn nothing from the BSE crisis? Nothing makes consumers more suspicious than suggestion or hint of a coverup.

For weeks, CFIA officials erred on the side of caution and conservatism, quietly, painstakingly tracing the source of the contamination. But their caution seems calculated to protect the company, not Canadian consumers. That strategy has backfired spectacularly.

Now, Alberta consumers truly can’t know what beef, if any, is safe to eat.

Now, the Americans, who only fully reopened their borders to Alberta beef in 2007, have a fresh and legitimate reason to wonder if our meat is safe. We’ve handed perfect ammunition to American protectionist lobby groups like R-CALF, to start agitating for more export regulation.

Short-term, Alberta cattle producers face the prospect of significantly lower prices — since XL processes almost half of all Alberta’s production.

Indeed, the XL shutdown demonstrates how vulnerable our beef supply chain is. Post-BSE, corporate concentration has left us almost entirely dependent on just two huge packing plants.

The long-term damage is harder to calculate.

Alberta’s beef is Alberta’s pride. We all have a stake in Alberta beef. If we can’t restore public confidence in the brand, and quickly, we stand to lose more than just a few thousand pounds of raw meat.

Through all this, Alberta Agriculture and Rural Development has remained strangely quiet, insisting this was a limited problem at one federally regulated plant, and a federal responsibility.

In a Friday news conference, Agriculture Minister Verlyn Olson, far from chastising the CFIA, defended Ottawa’s handling of the issue and stressed he didn’t want to see over-regulation.

Yet while the province isn’t responsible for inspecting the XL plant, it is responsible for protecting the health of Alberta’s beef industry, and the health of Albertans. Instead of downplaying this debacle, the Redford government needs to show leadership.

The era of shoot, shovel, and shut-up is over. Albertans deserve to know exactly what went wrong — and how to prevent it from happening again.

Paula S imons On Sept. 3, an American health inspector discovered beef slaughtered and packaged at the XL Lakeside packing plant in Brooks, Alta., and shipped south of the border for sale was infected with unusually high levels of E. coli. The United States Food...