The Agriculture, Food and Agribusiness Appeal Tribunal has accepted conflicting evidence from an organic dairy producer and the milk testing lab for dairy farmers of Ontario.
Organic producer Josh Biemond testified that he does not use antibiotics on the farm and that there is no way that the sample could have tested positive for amphenicols.
Yet the milk board’s lab said it did.
“We accept that evidence” the tribunal wrote of both conflicting sets of testimony.
“That does not, however, mean that the positive test is not reliable.” it wrote and so it dismissed Biemond’s appeal.
Say what?
The Biemonds, own New Care Farms Inc. and Upper Canada Creamery in buildings about 250 feet apart.
Because regulations prohibit the farmer from moving the milk himself, when milk produced at the farm is to be used by the creamery, it must be transferred in an approved bulk milk tanker by a Bulk Milk Tank Grader.
Stupid!
October 1, 2025, was a transfer day when milk was picked up by the trucker Jeff Cauvier and delivered to the creamery. It was not tested by the creamery. It was processed on the same day and the product sold.
As the milk from which the positive sample was taken had been processed and sold by the creamery, the Canadian Food Inspection Agency located and tested two litres of pasteurized milk from the creamery presumably produced from the milk the creamery received on October 1, 2025.
These tests, undertaken at a CFIA laboratory, were negative for amphenicols.
However, these tests are not considered official under the scheme for the testing of raw milk prescribed in Ontario Regulation 761.
So the DFO lab results are official, but CFIA's are not. Go figure!
Milk tested in the farm’s bulk milk tank on Oc.t 3 was fine.
This, as I said at the beginning, is a most unusual case.
