Friday, January 16, 2015

Tribunal cancels $6,000 hog-farmer fine

The Canada Agricultural Review Tribunal has cancelled a $6,000 fine the Canadian Food Inspection Agency imposed on hog farmer Keith Ypma of Edgebrook Farm Ltd. Of Purple Springs, near Taber, Alta.

Tribunal chairman Donald Buckingham said the CFIA could not prove that Ypma was negligent in loading 230 pigs to ship to Britco Packing of Langley, B.C.

Twenty-seven were found dead by the CFIA veterinarian at the plant.

Eleven of those were dead on arrival at the packing plant on Sunday, Oct. 6, 2013. The others died before Monday operations began.

Ypma testified that his finishing barn – he has four with a capacity of 2,000 each – was full and some pigs were coughing, so he decided to thin the numbers to provide more space for the remainder.

Britco agreed to take delivery ahead of schedule, so the 230 were loaded on Saturday.

About 25 pigs in the barn had died by the time the loading took place, but Ypma and the staff did not know that Glasser’s Disease was the cause.

The pigs that were loaded appeared to be healthy, according to testimony of the trucker and farm staff involved in the loading.


Buckingham said in his decision that there was “mixed” evidence about the condition of the hogs when they were loaded, but decided that the CFIA could not prove negligence.