Another housing option for sows

Australians are using Maternity Ring technology for housing gestating sows as an alternative to gestation crates which have been attacked by animal welfare organizations and has resulted in some downstream industry bans.

Many North Americans have switched to loose housing, but Dr. George Charbonneau said typically the perception is that the increased behavioural freedom of sows results in an unacceptable level of piglet mortality. 

Many of the loose housing farrowing designs have a floor footprint (space) that is often 50 per cent greater than a standard farrowing crate per pen footprint., he wrote on the swineweb website.

This larger footprint continues to be one of the impediments to the adoption of confinement-free farrowing. 

The Maternity Ring (MR), is a farrowing system with a similar footprint to a conventional farrowing crate and pen. The Maternity Ring is in use in Australia but its performance, particularly with regard to piglet survival, has not yet been studied in a controlled experiment. 

A team of Australian researchers wanted to determine whether piglet mortality differed between farrowing crates and Maternity Rings. 

First-parity sows were recruited over 12 months and randomly allocated to one of the two treatments: farrowing crate (FC) and Maternity Ring.

The researchers found:

·       There was no difference in total pigs born, pigs born alive, or the number of pigs weaned between the two treatments.

·       There was a tendency for a 0.3-pig-per-litter increase in pre-foster mortality in MR sows, but pigs born dead, post-foster deaths, liveborn mortality, and total deaths were similar to FC sows.

·       Piglet removal for ill thrift was zero.

·       The incidence of medications in sows was six per cent in MR and 15 per cent in FC.

·       MR housing achieved comparable liveborn piglet mortality to FC first-parity sows. Future studies should test whether this performance is repeatable as sows are managed across multiple parities.

Charlebois said the reduced medication needs for MR housing offset a slightly higher mortality rate.

He noted that the MR was installed in the same amount of floor space as the conventional farrowing crate and should provide a commercially viable, close-confinement-free option to replace the traditional farrowing crate. 

This study examined only first parity sows and would need to be repeated in older parities, he said.

Chicken prices rising

Despite record-high production targets set by the national Chicken Farmers of Canada marketing agency, there is a shortage of chicken.

Since a year ago the wholesale price of some chicken products has increased by approximately 12 per cent. 

In April, the consumer price for fresh or frozen chicken rose 2.6 per cent, year-over-year. It was the first time since September, 2025, that annual price hikes dipped below 5 per cent.

Farmers get paid prices that reflect production costs, so they are not pocketing higher profits other than through increased volume.

And chicken farmers are unable to fully respond because there is a shortage of chicks, the result of avian influenza wiping out some hatching egg flocks and a lagging response to increased demand.

Higher prices for beef – up by 23 per cent from the five-year average – is driving demand for chicken.

“We’re just seeing more and more production, and higher and higher prices. It’s the exact opposite of what you learned in grade 11 economics,” said market analyst Kevin Grier.

“Nobody should expect lower chicken prices. Period.”

NFU raises alarms over CFIA

 

The National Farmers Union is raising alarms over provisions in the Liberal government’s budget bill that would allow it to waive Canadian Food Inspection Agency and Pest Product regulations to protect national security or regional economic security.

Neither of those situations are defined in the proposed legislation.

The NFU said “the bill contains a section that would permit Cabinet to override all of the laws under the Canadian Food Inspection Agency’s (CFIA) authority – except for the Plant Breeders Rights Act.

 The bill would allow Cabinet to “exempt persons, things or activities, or classes of persons, things or activities” from any provision of these laws or regulations for up to six years if “necessary to protect national economic security, regional economic security or national food security” as long as it is “not likely to pose an unreasonable risk to food safety, animal health, plant health, human health or the environment”.

No definitions or parameters regarding “economic security”, “national food security” or “unreasonable risk” are provided, so this clause would be used entirely at the discretion of Cabinet, the NFU said.

“It unnecessarily politicizes the legal framework governing our food, health and environmental safety and invites self-interested corporations to lobby Cabinet members for exemptions that would be against the public interest.,” the NFU said.

Cabinet deliberations are kept confidential for twenty years, so any considerations leading to exemptions from CFIA laws or regulations would be non-transparent. And because it is rare for governments to reduce their powers, once these amendments are enacted, they will be available to all future governments.

The NFU then outlines some scenarios and asks questions.

If there were no consequences for cutting corners there would be a race to the bottom: the least responsible companies would become the most profitable, and it would be children, families, farmers and ecosystems that would bear the costs. 

It would have ripple effects on our healthcare system, the productivity of our farms and the integrity of our environment. 

An intact, public-interest focused regulatory framework reduces societal costs, sets standards fairly and distributes benefits to improve everyone’s well-being.

Would Cabinet use Bill C-30’s provisions to allow imports of food that does not meet Canadian standards for food safety? Would Cabinet allow importation of livestock and plants that could spread disease or infestations that cause losses for farmers and lead to export bans?  

Would Cabinet suspend inspections of crop exports sales, leading to potential violations and contamination incidents that could close markets? 

How much in-house expertise would be lost if CFIA personnel are terminated during exemption periods? 

Would those who gain from exemptions use the six-year period to lobby for legislation to make these changes permanent? 

Public trust is a critical element of our food system which the proposed amendment undermines.

If Canada is vulnerable to economic and food security crises, the answer is not deregulation., the NFU said.

The federal government needs to address root causes, including lack of infrastructure for local and regional food processing, storage and distribution, high input costs and low prices for commodity producers, excess corporate concentration, and financialization of both farmland and housing.

It's worth remembering that Adolf Hitler needed no new laws or regulations to impose his will on the German people. He misused the laws already on the books.

                 
 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Inflation is widespread

The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development reported that energy prices in April rose by 5.1 per cent and food prices by 0.4 per cent on average in its 23 member countries.

That brought food prices up by four per cent from last year and energy prices up by 13.2 per cent.

Inflation rates in Canada, the United States, France, Germany and Italy are now increasing at the highest rates since May 2023 in the aftermath of massive government spending to offset economic challenges related to the COVIC-19 pandemic.

Screwworms detected in Texas

Officials are clamping down on cattle movements in Texas following discovery of New World screwworms in a pasture.

The pest has been moving north in Mexico up to the United States border and has now crossed it.

The North American Meat reacted by assuring the public that beef is safe to eat. It said screwworms are not a food safety issue.

The institute said “our first priority is to protect the health of the nation’s livestock. We are encouraging members of the Meat Institute to work with local, state and federal authorities to detect and irradicate the pest.”

The United States Department of Agriculture "has been working hard to prevent and respond to New World Screwworm. For a year now they have improved biosecurity by investing in protections and treatments and coordinating rapid response. 

"We will look to USDA to brief industry stakeholders and call on them to consider allowing low risk terminal movements for slaughter to ensure animals continue to be processed,” the Institute said.

The pests enter livestock and people through open wounds, eyes, noe, ears and mouths and lay eggs that hatch into maggots that feed on flesh and are painful and foul smelling.

Appeal overturns animal activist snooping

 

The Ontario Court of Appeal has sided with farmers and overturned a lower court ruling that blockd the province’s law against farm trespassing by animal activists.

The so-called gag law was opposed by animal activist groups who want the right to snoop on farms as “under-cover agents”

Lawyer Kaitlyn Mitchell, director of legal advocacy at Animal Justice, said "without laws to protect farmed animals or meaningful oversight, undercover investigations and brave employee whistleblowers are the only way the public can learn the truth about how animals live on large industrial farms and die in slaughterhouses. 

“The public deserves to know how vulnerable animals are being treated behind closed doors," Mitchell said.

Farmers asked the government to pass the law in 2020 against trespassing and snooping on livestock and poultry farms.

The news release from the organization is riddled with overblown rhetoric that skirts the edges of truth.

They would do more good by using their resources and undercover snooping skills to check out homeless encampment for human abuses.

They’re more than the farmer’s wife

A new study from the University of Guelph says women's mental health is further strained by visible and invisible workloads/

They also lack recognition, often referred to as the farmer’s wife, not a farmer.

Jennifer Schooley, president of the Norfolk County Federation of Agriculture told CBC News that one of the more frustrating aspects of being a farmer are the assumptions people make about her as a woman in the agricultural industry.

"Growing up and watching that and the work (her mother and grandmother) put into it, I had no desire to farm because it's a lot of hard work for not a lot of money and it's a thankless job," she said.

It was during the pandemic Schooley decided to get behind the wheel of the family tractor to help her aging parents.

Now she has been able to host talks about life as a female farmer.

"It's a great opportunity to get the conversation started and it's a wonderful opportunity to reflect on the words that [other farmers] use and gender assumptions that they have when working with women in farming," she said.

"You're not just farming outside, but you're also the wife, the mother, most often the dinner maker, the clothes cleaner, the doctor taker, you're the peace maker and problem solver, the school liaison," she said. 

"You're still having all these roles and expectations on you and that can be a lot to juggle."

Andria Jones and her team at the University of Guelph have released studies in the past about the vulnerability of farmer's mental health and found that women were scoring higher in stress, depression, anxiety and burn out.

"Even with supportive partners, the management of the household often falls to them, so all of that combined with on farm work, off-farm work, plus being the chief executive officers of the household makes for very full days and a lot of stress."

Kristin Wheatcroft, director of Agriculture Wellness Ontario, said her organization regularly hears from women who are balancing not only farm operations and work, but family responsibilities, off-farm employment and the weight of supporting those around them.

"Acknowledging these challenges is an important step toward fostering healthier, more supportive farm families, workplaces and rural communities," Wheatcroft said.

It's especially important to address the mental health of female farmers as the number of women choosing careers in agriculture continues to grow.

 

And while there has been some progress made to recognize women for their roles in Canadian agriculture, there's still more to do, Jones said.

"We still have a ways to go. Presently, women make up 30 per cent of the Canadian farming population and I'm not entirely sure we see that reflected in things like leadership positions," she said.