Converting flies from pests to pets

Irvin Millin is an amazing, enthusiastic guy who was intrigued when he saw Russians using flies to decompose chicken manure.

Fly larvae make a lot of penny profits

Now he is poised to start a commercial-scale pilot project at the Arkell Research Centre run by the University of Guelph. He outlined his "invention" at a recent research meeting organized by the Poultry Industry Council.

The Russians began researching flies to digest human manure and other organic wastes that would pose a challenge in any space flight to Mars.

Milin, who is an engineer, says flies convert chicken manure into two great products - protein for poultry rations and fertilizer for fields. His system also eliminates odours which annoy neighbours.

He boasts that the process uses no chemicals, does no harm to the environment and eliminates ammonium, which is responsible for the pungent odours.

He said the Russian research in Siberia ended with the collapse of the Soviet Union and Russia’s economy.

That research team realized the potential to deal with many wastes, provided they could scale up the process to industrial size. They haven’t yet made it, but Milin believes he has.

He has run a small prototype at the Arkell Research Station and now is moving up to a commercial-scale prototype.

He showed how fly larvae multiply quickly as they consume and churn poultry litter, reducing it to a fine substance within four to six days that “smells like chocolate cookies,” he said. He also described it as smelling like a forest floor.

He’s had interest from the United States Department of Agriculture, from Peel Region which wants to try it on organic wastes and from Chinese who want to buy the technology. He said Peel’s organic wastes may need a different species of flies from those he’s using on poultry litter.

He also thinks there’s potential to decompose deadstock and solid waste from meat-packing plants.

Processed manure is like coffee grounds.
Milin says they could be pelletized.

It will also be a way to produce feed-ration protein on farm, he said. 

He said the flies die within 30 days and their bodies are simply added to the material being processed. 

The manure moves on a belt and in a relatively thin layer- so there’s good air exposure.

He said scaling the system up means basically adding more belt capacity. His first prototype could 100 to 250 kilograms per day and the new one will be scaled up to handle 200 to 300 kilograms per day.

The larger the scale, the greater the efficiency, he said, suggesting that a commercial operation would need to process about two tons a day to be profitable. That might mean collecting manure from several farms.

The fly larvae won’t work for liquid manure.  “They would drown,” Milin said.

Milin is an inventor who has made money from previous patents, including one for electroplating plastics. He has applied for patents for some aspects of his fly-larvae processing system.

He began his research “in a shack in my back yard,” he said.

The process is “very profitable,” he said, partly because of the protein recovery for animal feed. He said chickens excrete about 70 per cent of the nutrients they consume.

“The final products are a very rich and stable organic fertilizer and a protein-rich animal feed, “ he wrote in a paper accompanying his presentation.

He calls his technology Milinator.

                                    

Mennonite Relief Sale coming

Visitors spent $350,000 on 200 quilts, auctioned items and food at the 45th annual Mennonite Relief Sale at New Hamburg.
The sale, which is held on the last Saturday of May at the New Hamburg fairgrounds, is a sister to the Mennonite Heifer Sale every February at Carson's Auction Centre at Listowel.  Together, the two sales have now raised more than $14 million for the Mennonite Central Committee which helps poor people in more than 60 countries.

Seguin tells it like it is

Bob Seguin pulls his punches in a new report on international trade negotiations, but his message is clear: Canada is missing huge opportunities to improve things for Canadian farmers and businesses involved in agriculture and food.

Bob Seguin

It's clear that the World Trade Negotiations are stalled, and it's also clear that Canada can't do much to get things moving as long as politicians insist on pushing the so-called "balanced position".

What Canada has been doing is piddling away its negotiating manpower trying to negotiate free-trade agreements for minor markets. It has done 10 of these deals so far and 12 more are in the works. None will do much for Canadian agriculture, Seguin says.

There are some bigger fish we could be trying to catch, especially around the Pacific Rim where an expanded group of countries is negotiating a new free-trade deal. Canada has been frozen out, apparently because the United States and New Zealand won't let us in as long as we insist on hanging on to every last jot and tittle of protectionism for our dairy industry.

Then there are the negotiations with the European Union. Agriculture is unlikely to make any big gains there because Canada insists on retaining trade barriers for dairy and poultry and Europeans won't give up their Common Agriculture Policy. This is a mirror of the stalemate at the World Trade negotiations.

India is another big fish that has Canadian trade negotiators busy and Seguin identifies it as holding potential for Canadian agriculture exports.

The farm leaders for the dairy and poultry industries have repeated their position loud and often, persuading the House of Commons to vote unanimously to provide continued full-blown support for the system. What a bunch of cowards!

Surely it's well past time to give up the sham of protectionism for these millionaires. The farmers have known - or surely ought to have known - for decades that they will eventually have to adjust to reduced trade protection and increased competition.

They thought they were doomed by the Uruguay Round where they lost the right to continue import quotas. Instead they got sky-high tariffs, but with the warning that all tariffs would be reduced in the next round of world trade negotiations. The Doho Round has struggled along for a decade, but every single draft that has been put on the table calls for huge reductions in Canadian tariffs on dairy and poultry products.

The politicians ought to simply tell dairy and poultry farmers the plain truth: their protection will eventually  be reduced.  And the politicians ought to buckle down to negotiating the best possible terms for those Canadians who have worked hard to remain competitive and innovative in export markets.

That includes grains, oilseeds, pulses, beef, pork and a host of niche marketers whose revenues, if they gain improved access to global markets, could be impressive.

Seguin had a front-row seat at federal-provincial meetings of Canadian agriculture ministers. He also heard for every significant farm lobbying group in Ontario during his term as chief policy advisor to a number of Ontario agriculture ministers.

He recognizes the potential for Canada to be a powerhouse in a world where food demand is rapidly increasing.  He also knows the resistance and fear of those who are hunkered down, trying to protect their precious local markets.

So, are we doomed to another couple of decades of cowardice, or are Canadian farmers and agriculture businessmen ready to tackle global opportunities to prosper?

As for quota holders, they have options, including the choice to risk a future of increased competition or to cash in their quota which, in thousands of cases tops $1 million and in a few cases tops $50 million.

A lesson for farmers

Ontario's dairy and poultry farmers have been enjoying steady production and high prices for decades, so it's natural that they worship at the alter of supply management.

They should, however, step back and take a broader, longer-term view.

For assurance of survival in farming, nothing beats satisfied customers.  That has not been the highest priority of supply management, so it's a system sitting on quicksand, especially because its supply-managing powers depend on consistent political support in a global political climate where increasing trade and reducing protectionism are priorities.

Martin Gooch of the George Morris Centre has been preaching about value chain management, but has made virtually no progress with supply-managed commodities.  Others have been willing to give his ideas a try, including Vineland Growers Cooperative.

They started with peaches.  The trials last year indicate that the partners in marketing peaches can profit by increasing the sweetness of peaches and by adding colour standards for grading.

A combination of foil laid down between rows of trees to reflect sunlight and summer pruning increased the sweetness of the peaches. They are normally graded by size and in this case, they were also sorted by colour.

The most attractive peaches were graded Platinum for which growers received a $3 premium.

The trials also indicated that leaf thinning also works to improve peach quality, but it costs $2.40 per tree which is too much. Foil costs about 50 cents per tree and summer pruning, at six minutes per tree, about $1.13 per tree.

The trials also included different handling for three pickings; in one case, all three pickings were put into cold storage and held until all of them could be graded and packaged at the same time, which was 10 days after the first picking. In another trial, comparisons were made between grading the peaches “hot” from the orchard with grading after cool storage.

The partners in the trials were Chris Andrewes of Andrewes Farms Ltd. and George Lepp of Lepp Family Farms/Niagara Shoreline Growers, the Vineland Growers Coop Ltd. and Loblaws.

The study began with a visit to California where they asked about factors influencing yield and quality and with customer interviews in stores to determine the key factors influencing their peach-buying decisions.

Visual appeal and eating experience were ranked top among 15 factors and, while price was important, it was not as important as the top two.

The peach industry intends to build on last year’s trials for this year’s harvest and marketing.

Michael Ecker, manager of Vineland Growers Coop Ltd., said nectarine trials will be added this season.

Imagine what might be done with special dairy and poultry products, designed and delivered to delight customers with the factors they identify as most important. That approach is guaranteed to be longer-lasting than total reliance on vigorous and persistent political support for supply management.

         

Agriculture gaining status in international aid

Bill and Melinda Gates

Bill and Melinda Gates are pushing improvements in farming as important in relieving poverty in Asia and Africa, including $1.7 billion donated from a fund they have created with billionaire Warren Buffet.

Another initiative is the Global Agricultural and Food Security Program which Canada joined last year with a donation of $230 million. The U.S. pledged  $475 million, but has so far only given $66.6 million; that, plus other national laggards, leaves the fund with only 45 per cent of the money promised on the eve of the first disbursements to Africa and Asia.

While Canada found the money for this donation, it is planning to cut international aid by $1.8 billion between now and fiscal 2014-15. It is also shifting money out of Africa and Asia, which have some of the poorest nations and people in the world, to South and Central America and the Caribbean.

Namango Ngongi, president of the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa, says farming productivity is so low that even minor improvements yield big gains.

Gates told a Chicago audience recently that nations’ concerns about fiscal problems “shouldn’t become a crisis of courage and it should not force cuts in programs that pay huge returns.”

The Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa has been pleading for money from the Canadian International Development Agency, but so far has only received minor funding from Canada via its Canadian International Development Research Centre.

African economist Dambisa Mayo has written a book called Dead Aid in which she argues that international (multilateral) aid money is easy pickings for corrupt politicians. 

Dead Aid author Dambisa Mayo

The same is true for money given directly country to country (bilateral aid), she says, because the African politicians don’t have to answer to their people for money they take; if they raised the money through local taxation, they would be held accountable, she says.

But she also praises direct aid through non-government organizations that bypass governments, and she is particularly impressed by Kiva, a micro-credit organization that uses the internet to link donors with recipients.

Bev Oda, the cabinet minister responsible for the Canadian International Development Agency, has cut funding for a number of non-government agencies. 

She was judged guilty of “misleading” the House of Commons, a polite term for lying, when she indicated she did not know who made the decision to cut funding for KAIROS, a Christian NGO. Later she confessed that it was her who made the decision to insert “not” in the CIDA staff recommendation on extending funding for KAIROS.

A number of people, including e-mails from me, have urged Oda to retain funding for NGOs and, if she’s short of money, to divert a slice of the funds that have been going via the channels that Moyo criticizes as counter-productive.

Hudson buys Vermont's largest farm

Burnbrae Farms is one of three partners who have bought the largest egg farm in Vermont.

The 100,000-bird operation was built in 1996 by Lucien Breton of Aliments Breton, one of the largest diversified farming and processing companies in Quebec.

No price was disclosed; Breton spent $3 million in 1996, but was thwarted in attempts to expand to 500,000, then to 280,000. Neighbours objected to odours and flies.

Ted Hudson, vice-president of Burnbrae, told reporters in Vermont that he has no immediate plans to expand the farm. The other investors with Burnbrae are Ferme Hubert Inc. of Nicolet and Ferme A.B. Morin & Son of St. Bernard, both in Quebec.

Burnbrae is under investigation by the Competition Bureau in Canada after officials there learned of court files that include e-mail correspondence between Ted Hudson and Bill Gray of Grayridge.

Burnbrae and Grayridge own more than 90 per cent of the egg-grading business in Ontario, they both have dominant companies in Quebec and they have other significant operations in other provinces, including British Columbia, Alberta and Manitoba. 

Meanwhile, Nutri Oeuf of Quebec has confirmed that the deal between Ontario Pride Eggs, where it is 50 per cent owner with a group of Ontario egg producers, and Best Choice Eggs was not a merger, but a purchase.

“We purchased the assets,” Nutri Oeuf spokesman Richard Decelles confirmed in a telephone interview.

Svante Lind, who founded Best Choice Eggs, retains ownership of the grading station and equipment, but is out of the egg-grading business. He also owns Verified Eggs which is involved in certifying production of free-range eggs for customers such as Loblaws.

Lind is suing Burnbrae, Grayridge and the Egg Farmers of Ontario marketing board, accusing them of conspiring to drive him out of the egg-grading business. The next court date is June 10 in Oshawa where one of the key battles is over electronic files that a whistleblower took from Gray and which are under court protection, pending the outcome of lawsuits to determine whether the files contain information that ought to be included as evidence in Lind's lawsuits.

Some of those documents in courthouses in London and Oshawa are e-mails among the three about how they could deal with Lind. There is also e-mail evidence that Bill Gray and Scott Brookshaw, his vice-president of operations, instructed staff to manipulate automatic egg-grading equipment to include cracks in retail-ready packs of Grade A eggs.

The egg board penalized Lind because his percentage of Grade A eggs fell short of the provincial average.  The court documents include allegations that Gray's manipulation of grading defrauded consumers by about $25 to $30 million a year. 

The Oshawa court documents allege that Burnbrae was doing the same things as Grayridge.

Lawyers for Grayridge and Burnbrae deny the allegations of wrongdoing.

Grayridge has also filed a number of contempt of court charges against Norman Bourdeau, the whistleblower who made the copies of Gray's electronic files that are at the centre of the lawsuits now. They will also come up at the June 10 court hearings.

At issue in the contempt charges is whether Bourdeau was wrong to turn over copies of some of the electronic information to others, including police and other authorities, such as the Ontario Farm Products Marketing Commission, the Farm Products Council of Canada and the Competition Bureau.

                           -30-

Bird cages under study at University of Guelph

Dr. Tina Widowski has been granted $770,000 to research welfare issues related to different types of housing for laying hens.

The money comes from the Egg Farmers of Canada, the national agency for supply management, and is one of three research chairs it intends to fund. It has yet to announce the other two.

Widowski is Director of the Campbell Centre for the Study of Animal Welfare at the University of Guelph. 

Widowski presented a literature review of research on this very issue last year at a meeting organized by the Poultry Industry Council. The review made it clear that there are benefits and drawbacks to all forms of housing, including allowing hens freedom to range outdoors.

Cages allow manure to fall away, so the birds don't  tramp in it and that results in better health and lower mortality rates.

But cages also deny birds their desires to nest and dust bathe. 

One alternative is housing birds in an aviary where they can roam across a floor, scratch in bedding and perch on roosts. Those birds have more leg problems and diseases and a higher mortality rate.

Allowing birds freedom to range outside is appealing to many city people and critics of caging birds, yet that's the riskiest alternative from a bird's point of view. They are exposed to more diseases and parasites and their mortality rates are higher than the alternatives.

There are quite a few options, including offering more space in cages and "enhancing" cages with roosts and nesting boxes.

Critics of caging birds have spent small fortunes to sway public opinion and recently have been focusing on meetings with executives of supermarket chains and fast-food restaurant chains, persuading them to promote cage-free and free-range eggs. Loblaws, for example, has promised that it will ban caged-egg production for its President’s Choice line, but informed sources say that fulfilling that promise has been challenging in terms of lining up supplies.

There are rumours that Loblaws will soon reach deals with suppliers so it can announce a launch before the end of May. One of  the big questions is whether Canadian producers will be able to meet the demand; if not, Loblaws and/or the grading stations that supply its supermarkets will be applying to import cheaper eggs from the United States.

Both Grayridge and Burnbrae, which hold more than 90 per cent of the Ontario market and have nation-wide business, already offer free-range eggs to major retail customers, such as Wal-Mart and Loblaws.

Svante Lind of Best Choice Eggs made a proposal a couple of years ago that egg producers willing to undertake the higher costs to produce cage-free and free-range eggs get a break on a limited amount of quota. The egg board rejected that proposal. 

It’s general manager, Harry Pelissero, has consistently said that the board does not favour one production approach over another and that it’s up to farmers and their customers to decide what to produce under the quota they hold.

That's what Pelissero says for public consumption. Court records contain e-mails among Pelissero, Bill Gray of Grayridge and Burnbrae indicating they are concerned that demand for niche-market eggs will threaten their businesses.

The e-mails are in court files relating to lawsuits between Lind and Burnbrae, Grayridge and the Egg Farmers of Ontario marketing board.

Milk quota follies

The Baes family - father Leon and sons Stephen and Michael - testified at an appeals tribunal hearing at Guelph today, detailing once again why the milk board's quota transfer policies are flawed.



Leon Baes, who immigrated from Belgium in 1967, worked hard with his two sons to establish themselves in dairy farming.



By all accounts, Leon and Michael have been successful, Stephen not so much. They helped Stephen as he struggled within the family enterprise, providing him a barn and home, feed at discount prices and the loan of cows when he needed more milk to meet quota. Leon invested more than $60,000 to renovate his barn, the family put new rooves on the barn and house and they basically helped Stephen make ends meet as his dairy-farming venture failed.

Eventually they realized Stephen's farm was not going to make it, so they sought board permission to transfer his quota into the company owned by Leon and Michael and their wives. They have offered to keep Stephen as an employee, but are sure they can manage his cows much better to avoid the Somatic Cell Count penalties he faced and to bring milk production from well below average into the top 10 per cent in Ontario, which is where their herd ranks.

But the milk board, in its determination to put a lid on quota prices, has banned quota mergers. The board has no regard for the deal the family made that if the sons' ventures should ever fail, the quota would revert to Leon. Nor does the board have any regard for all of the blood, sweat and tears the family has poured into their business.



No, the board has decided that the only way to transfer quota is through its monthly exchange. But, ever since the board imposed a ceiling of $25,000 per kilogram on prices, hardly any has been offered for sale. Michael testified that even if he were to offer top price for quota, he would only be able to get enough for one teat of one cow via the exchange.



It's no surprise that the milk board has faced lots of appeals against its extremely restrictive quota transfer policy. It is also no surprise, but a travesty of justice, that the public interest has been totally ignored by the body appointed to ensure public accountability - the Ontario Farm Products Marketing Commission. The commission operates more as a rubber stamp and apologist for marketing board policies, no matter matter how foolish, than as a public-interest supervisory body.

This restrictive quota transfer policy is holding production in some of the least efficient and poorly-managed dairy farms in the province. It is banning the most efficient, progressive and well-managed farms from expanding. It is ensuring that the consuming public has to put up with below-average milk quality, such as that from Stephen Baes's herd, while being denied increased supplies from the highest-quality herds. Michael and Leon's operation ranked fourth for Perth County in herd management last year.



There is no question that the Baes family ought to be able to merge their quotas. There is likewise no question that all dairy-farming families who want to merge their quotas ought to be granted that right. And there is no question that the milk board's current quota-transfer policies are a failure. Just because a majority of dairy farmers may or may not support the policies does not make them right.

Hog manure lawsuit

I'll bet a couple of U.S. hog companies are sorry they opposed a Missouri-community bylaw to regulate hog farms.
They managed to persuade a judge to throw out the law that local residents voted to implement, but now they face a $1.95-million judgement awarded by a Barton County jury.
Twelve people filed the lawsuit, complaining that the pigs owned by Synergy of Iowa and raised locally by Kemona, ruined their lives. The jury agreed.

Pullets Plus Inc. is growing

Pullets Plus Inc. has been expanding since Clarence Martin bought it four years ago from Bruce Weber.

Weber “retired” and took on the challenge of developing a townhouse condominium development because he wanted a nice place to live.

Clarence Martin with his free-range nesting boxes

Martin, who was born and raised on a farm and was a livestock trucker for 17 years, bought the business because it’s in his home community and because he could see a need for the services that Weber pioneered to continue and expand.

“I thought there would be less regulation than the trucking business,” he said. Then he began to learn about marketing boards and how they several times hassled Weber.

He’s therefore careful to stay within the four corners of the regulations as he does his best to serve customers which range from Chinese immigrants looking to buy one or a few red-feathered pullets to slaughter to farmers who were “grandfathered” to have up to 500 birds when the Egg Farmers of Ontario marketing board lowered the limit to 100 to pullet growers who have a few score or hundred extra pullets for which they need temporary housing because a new flock is coming soon into their barn.

The “pullet motel” is a HACCP-approved building where he can provide temporary housing for these pullets.

But his main business is providing pullets to farmers who want to keep 100 or 500, many of them to produce eggs to free-range or cage-free standards for the increasing consumer demand.

He not only sells these farmers ready-to-lay pullets, both for the brown and white egg markets, but also accepts their eggs for Ontario Pride’s grading station and province-wide distribution network.

Martin’s pullet customers range from several in the Windsor area to Earlton and New Liskeard and east into the Ottawa Valley.

He delivers pullets, using cages and his pickup or, for large orders, a trailer that can haul up to 2,000 birds. That’s a sign of growth; the previous trailer’s capacity was 1,200 pullets.

Sometimes egg and pullet farmers hire Martin to truck their birds because it’s well-suited to flocks of less than a big-truck load.

Martin has expanded to offer equipment and housing for hobby farmers and back-yard flocks in city settings. It ‘s common for families to buy two to eight birds as a project for their children or grandchildren and to provide fresh eggs and hands-on practical education.

Martin builds coops for these customers with a wire-mesh area on the one end for outdoors exposure and an enclosed area with a hen-sized door at the other end. It retails for $600 which, says Martin, “is a lot less than some of the Cadillac mansions I’ve seen people build themselves.”

He is also having a local business manufacture sets of nesting boxes for free-range hens.

That resolves the challenge of hunting for eggs and also improves egg cleanliness and hen hygiene because the eggs, as they’re laid, roll out into a collection area, just as happens in housing for caged birds.

The nesting boxes have a flexible flap covering the entrance, making it easy for hens to gain access, but also providing privacy while they’re laying an egg. Any manure they drop falls through the caged floor which is better for the hens and for the eggs.

There is a perch in front of the nesting boxes.

The assembly rolls open for easy and thorough cleaning of the nesting boxes.

He also sells drinkers, feeders and all of the paraphernalia a hobby farmer might wish.

Martin enjoys watching his Asian customers come to pick out hens for a meal. They prefer pullets because they’re smaller than dual-purpose birds, yet big enough to provide a meal when they have reached egg-laying age.

“They will look over a pen of birds very carefully to choose the one they want. Sometimes they notice nearby birds I have caged for delivery to a customer, and that’s what they’ll want,” Martin said.

He has noticed a steady increase in city customers, including those living in cities that have not yet amended their bylaws to legalize a back-yard flock. He had a flurry of business when Waterloo City Council decided to amend its bylaw to ban backyard chicken flocks, but offered to “grandfather” those who had flocks before the end of the month.

“We had quite a spike in business on the last two weekends of that month,” Martin said.

As yet one more service, he will collect and truck spent hens to a slaughter facility.

As for regulatory nuisances, he takes care to fill out the paperwork to obtain a licence to transport birds from the Chicken Farmers of Ontario marketing board and recounts how “two big inspectors over six feet each” tried to bully Weber because they noticed he was taking pullets for slaughter and they thought he might be violating chicken board regulations.

Weber got a letter from the chicken board recognizing the business as pullet growing.

The chicken board was also aggressive in pursuing a neighbouring businesses, such as Bonnie’s Chick Hatchery in Elmira and Frey’s Hatchery in St. Jacobs because they have a lot of small-scale and hobby-farming customers for egg-laying and dual-purpose chicks.

Martin said the egg board keeps a close watch to ensure that farmers are not exceeding flock limits of 100 or 500 birds, and he’s a convenient focal point for their vigilance.

                                    -30-

Farm organizations re-registering

Ontario's four general farm organizations are to appear before the appeals tribunal to justify continued funding through the province’s legislation that requires all farmers to register and pay an annual fee.

The fee is refundable to those who apply to the organization they choose from among the four. Only registered farmers qualify for provincial government support programs and subsidies.

The Ontario Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs Appeals Tribunal’s schedule is:

-       The Ontario Federation of Agriculture on Monday, June 6, at the tribunal offices at the head office of the Ontario Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs, 1 Stone Road, Guelph.

-       The Christian Farmers Federation of Ontario at the tribunal offices Tuesday, June 7.

-       L’Union des cultivateurs franco-ontariens in Ottawa June 7. That hearing will be in the Cornwall Room, Ministry of the Environment, 2430 Don Reid Drive, Ottawa.

-       The National Famers Union, Ontario Branch, June 8.

All of the hearings begin at 9:30 a.m. and are open to the public.

Lind is merging Best Choice Eggs

Svante Lind’s Best Choice Eggs business is merging with Ontario Pride Eggs, a co-operative started by 11 Ontario egg producers in Eastern Ontario and the Toronto area in 2009.

The merger comes after Lind has complained that Joe Hudson of Burnbrae Farms Ltd., Bill Gray of Gray Ridge Egg Farms Ltd. and the Egg Farmers of Ontario marketing board have conspired to drive him out of business. Lind has filed lawsuits against the three.

Ontario Pride took over Monkland Egg Grading Station and has been gradually expanding by becoming the first to be able to market certified organic eggs and by linking with Groupe-Nutri-Group, a nation-wide business that operates through a number of subsidiaries including the farmer-owned co-operative Nutri-Oeuf in Quebec, Countryside Farms in Nova Scotia and Manitoba Pride Eggs. It is also involved with Supreme Egg Products, a processing business on the site of the former Global Eggs business in Toronto.

Best Choice has sent letters out to its customers and suppliers informing them about the merger, which is how the news was discovered.

Lind has not issued any news release nor is he communicating with reporters.

Lind has another business, Verified Eggs, which provides traceability for niche-marketing eggs, such as free-range and organic eggs. Through Rowe Farms and Green Valley, its eggs are marketed by those businesses to Loblaws, Fortinos, Great Canadian Supermarket, Sobey’s Metro and A&P supermarkets.

Verified Eggs sells directly to a number of retail outlets, such as the Longo’s supermarket chain Grocery Gateway’s home delivery service, Whole Foods stores, Fiesta Farms, The Big Carrot and Oriental Supermarket.

I'm wondering how big the damages might be if and when Lind persuades a judge that he was forced into this merger by the dirty tricks of Bill Gray and Joe Hudson. Of course, all of the allegations remain to be proven in court. Provided the motherlode of electronic e-mails and data is allowed into the court case, the proof should be relatively easy to establish.

In fact, if the electronic data makes it in, look for Gray and Hudson to seek an out-of-court settlement. All of which should make them wonder why they're spending so much on lawyers.

Milk quota follies

The Baes family - father Leon and sons Stephen and Michael - testified at an appeals tribunal hearing at Guelph today, detailing once again why the milk board's quota transfer policies are flawed.

Leon Baes, who immigrated form Belgium in 1967, worked hard with his two sons to establish themselves in dairy farming.

By all accounts, Leon and Michael have been successful, Stephen not so much. They helped Stephen as he struggled within the family enterprise, providing him a barn and home, feed at discount prices and the loan of cows when he needed more milk to meet quota. Leon invested more than $60,000 to renovate his barn, the family put new rooves on the barn and house and they basically helped Stephen make ends meet as his dairy-farming venture failed.

Eventually they realized Stephen's farm was not going to make it, so they sought board permission to transfer his quota into the company owned by Leon and Michael and their wives. They have offered to keep Stephen as an employee, but are sure they can manage his cows much better to avoid the Somatic Cell Count penalties he faced and to bring milk production from well below average into the top 10 per cent in Ontario, which is where their herd ranks.

But the milk board, in its determination to put a lid on quota prices, has banned quota mergers. The board has no regard for the deal the family made that if the sons' ventures should ever fail, the quota would revert to Leon. Nor does the board have any regard for all of the blood, sweat and tears the family has poured into their business.

No, the board has decided that the only way to transfer quota is through its monthly exchange. But, ever since the board imposed a ceiling of $25,000 per kilogram on prices, hardly any has been offered for sale. Michael testified that even if he were to offer top price for quota, he would only be able to get enough for one teat of one cow via the exchange.

It's no surprise that the milk board has faced lots of appeals against its extremely restrictive quota transfer policy. It is also no surprise, but a travesty of justice, that the public interest has been totally ignored by the body appointed to ensure public accountability - the Ontario Farm Products Marketing Commission. The commission operates more as a rubber stamp and apologist for marketing board policies, no matter matter how foolish, than as a public-interest supervisory body.

This restrictive quota transfer policy is holding production in some of the least efficient and poorly-managed dairy farms in the province. It is banning the most efficient, progressive and well-managed farms from expanding. It is ensuring that the consuming public has to put up with below-average milk quality, such as that from Stephen Baes's herd, while being denied increased supplies from the highest-quality herds. Michael and Leon's operation ranked fourth for Perth County in herd management last year.

There is no question that the Baes family ought to be able to merge their quotas. There is likewise no question that all dairy-farming families who want to merge their quotas ought to be granted that right. And there is no question that the milk board's current quota-transfer policies are a failure. Just because a majority of dairy farmers may or may not support the policies does not make them right.

Bourdeau loses round one

Superior Court Justice Christopher Bondy has denied whistleblower Norman Bourdeau’s claims against L.H. Gray and Sons Ltd., but it’s far from the final word in the lawsuits between the two.

I tend to agree with Bourdeau's comment that this is a minor issue.

Bourdeau filed a lawsuit accusing Gray of defamation, conspiracy and “other tortuous conduct” when Gray’s lawyers hit him with a lawsuit claiming breach of fiduciary duty, confidentiality, good faith obligations, defamation and intentional interference in economic relations.

Far more important in this battle between the two is how the judge will rule on Gray's lawsuit against Bourdeau.

Also yet to come are Bourdeau’s lawsuit against Gray for wrongful dismissal as the company’s chief information technology officer and his statement of claim.

Justice Bondy awarded $8,000 in costs that Bourdeau is to pay Gray.

The main event remains lawsuits filed by Svante Lind, owner of Best Choice Eggs at Blackstock, against Gray, Burnbrae Farms Ltd. and the Egg Farmers of Ontario marketing board.

Some of that saga is due to unfold in Superior Court in Oshawa on June 10, including the contentious issue about whether electronic data Bourdeau took from Gray can be allowed as evidence in the cases and, if so, how much.

Bourdeau says in court documents filed in London and Oshawa that the information reveals a conspiracy among Gray, Burnbrae and the egg board against Lind and that it shows Gray manipulated automatic egg-grading equipment to include cracks in retail-ready packages sold as Grade A eggs.

That, he says, amounted to $25 to $30 million worth of cracks sold as Grade A eggs each year for many years.

Gray has denied any wrongdoing.

Mennonite relief sale coming

I have been a life-long admirer of the Mennonite Central Committee, better known as MCC, and the work it does to bring relief, hope and development to some of the poorest people in some of the poorest communities in the world.

It is one of the rare things that brings the fractured Mennonite communities of North America together in common cause, from the most conservative of the Old Order and Amish farming congregations to the most progressive city churches.

Here in the Waterloo Region, led by the late Ward Shantz, Mennonites organize annual auction sales to raise money for the MCC - the New Hamburg Mennonite Relief Sale the last Saturday of May where more than 200 hard-sewn quilts are the main attraction, in Listowel the last Friday of February the Mennonite Heifer Sale.

Ross Shantz has taken over from his father to head the New Hamburg event which last year attracted more than 15,000 people to spent more than $330,000 - every penny of it going to the MCC. The total raised by the two annual sales, which began 44 years ago, now tops $15 million.

This year’s New Hamburg Mennonite Relief Sale will feature the auction of a restored1952 WD McCormick tractor and cultivator donated by Leon Frey of Drayton.

New this year will be a solid-wood furniture auction Friday evening and an outdoor auction of sports equipment and many other items on Saturday.

There will be food stands and booths on the fairgrounds with groups donating everything - the food, the paper plates and serviettes, their labour. The same is true for those who donate plants and items for auction.

Fresh rhubarb is another new attraction this year, complementing the fresh strawberry pies made on site, the Mennonite fleish peroschki and verenki and pork on a bun and much more.