Ontario finally moving on diseases

A couple of years after it passed legislation enabling it to tackle outbreaks of highly-contagious diseases, the Ontario Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs is saying that it will soon post a list of those diseases and invite public comment.

The main thing that has been done so far is the appointment of a chief veterinary officer with power to move swiftly to contain an outbreak of a foreign animal disease, such as hoof and mouth disease in livestock or avian influenza in poultry.

The ministry’s new regulations will force prompt reporting of an outbreak and will outline compensation for farmers, designed to offset any hesitation they might have about reporting a disease in their herd or flock.

The federal government already has the legislative power to do what the province is proposing. It has found there is a difficult line to walk on compensation – enough to encourage reporting, but not so much that farmers are happy to get a disease because the compensation is generous.

                                   

Hog farmers alerted about Erysipelas

 Several veterinarians in the mid-western United States have noticed a marked increase in cases of erysipelas in market hogs, triggering an alert to farmers to watch for symptoms.

The veterinarians met with the United States Department of Agriculture about the situation and about packing-plant carcass condemnations.

There was a dramatic increase of erysipelas in 1999-2000.

Vaccination of replacement gilts, adult animals and finish hogs can aid in the prevention of Erysipelas lesions and losses.

Symptoms include blisters, fever, shaking, and chills. The spots that arise are painful, very red, swollen, and skin underneath the sore is warm.

It can infect people; it is treated with penicillin, sometimes requiring intravenous treatment if it enters the bloodstream where it can attack organs, including the heart.

Swine erysipelas is caused by a bacterium, Erysipelothrix rhusiopathiae that is found in most if not all pig farms. Up to 50 per of animals may carry it in their tonsils.

              

HSUS pressures Tim’s

The Humane Society of the United States (HSUS) has bought at least one share in Tim Horton’s and is using that to bring pressure on the company to stop buying bacon from packers who buy hogs from farmers who use gestation stalls for their sows.

The HSUS has started by calling for a feasibility study related to pigs raised in the United States.

This is a copy of what the HSUS did to McDonald’s which has given its suppliers until May to come up with proposals.

The HSUS tactic mirrors what it did to McDonald’s which answered in February, saying to its suppliers “there are alternatives that we think are better for the welfare of sows.”

The HSUS proposal for Tim Hortons will be voted on at the company’s annual meeting in May.

“People simply don’t support the lifelong confinement of farm animals in tiny crates,” says Matthew Prescott, food policy director for HSUS's farm animal protection division.

“When it comes to addressing cruelty to animals . . . Tim Hortons is severely lagging,” he said.

Smithfield Foods and Hormel Foods promised to phase out gestation stalls by 2017.

Maple Leaf Foods also has a policy on the books to move its company-owned operations away from using gestation-sow stalls.

The HSUS is challenging other pork producer/packers such as Seaboard Foods and Tyson Foods to follow suit in their own sow-housing policies.

Tim Hortons has more than 3,000 restaurants in Canada and more than 600 in the U.S

                           

Taxpayer federation slams tobacco buyout

The Canadian Taxpayers Federation has singled out the federal government’s buyout program for tobacco farmers as the biggest waste of government money.

The federation chooses an award winner every year and this time it is the $284 million Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada spent in fiscal 2008-09 to buy out quota holders.

The federation is far from the first to identify problems with the program. A number of appeals to the Ontario Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs Tribunal revealed chaotic conditions in the final weeks before the program was officially launched.

But it's hardly the federal agriculture department that deserves blame; it's the farmers who set out to scam the program.

It’s clear that many families schemed to find ways to take the buyout money but continue growing tobascco and that’s what the Canadian Taxpayers Federation has identified as the reason for picking the program as the biggest waste of government money.

Smoking the government, big time!

The province was urged to join the program on a 60:40 funding ratio, but declined to put up its 40 per cent.

The taxpayer federation’s director, Gregory Thomas, called the department the top-cat of tobacco.

“More than half the 1,000 recipients of fat federal cheques were not actually active tobacco farmers,” he said.

Some farmers ended up taking money to get out of the business, then shifted their land and equipment to relatives who kept on growing tobacco.

Tobacco production doubled the next year, the auditor general found in a report last year, and there were more farmers growing tobacco than before the buyout.

That’s hardly surprising because nobody needs to buy quota now.

A spokesperson for Agriculture Minister Gerry Ritz said the program is under review. Really? Locking the vault now that the money's gone?

“This program’s parameters include an audit to ensure that provincial tobacco licences have not been issued to participants,” Meagan Murdoch wrote in an e-mail. 

Well, Ms Murdoch, you can check the licences, but I doubt you're going to find any issued in the names of those who took the buyout. Their sons? Their brothers and sisters? Their friends? Maybe.

“If the audit shows that any recipients violated any of these terms and conditions, they will be forced to repay the full amount with interest,” she said.

That and $2 will get you a cup of coffee.

It’s the 14th year that the federation has handed out the awards, nicknamed the Teddies after a bureaucrat infamous for extravagant expense claims.

The awards are gilded pig statuettes awarded in four categories; municipal waste, provincial waste, federal waste and lifetime achievement.

While it might read like a huge scam in urban areas, the buyout of tobacco quota is defensible. After all, about half of their market had been stolen by the black market which the federal government is responsible to eliminate.        

Special foods sector needs help

 The farmers and companies trying to produce and market specialty foods need help from the government and should organize their own national association, according to a report from the George Morris Centre that was commissioned by the federal agriculture department.

The centre’s Value Chain Management team found that those in the business could benefit from market intelligence, from management training, from learning how to approach retailers and by adopting standards that match global-trading standards.

Market intelligence is important to identify opportunities and  to develop production and marketing plans, but neither Statistics Canada nor AC Neilson provides this type of information for Canadians,  says the report.

This “contrasts markedly” from what’s available to the farmers and processors in the United States and other jurisdictions, says the report.

Another major impediment is the fact these special foods are outside the mainstream Canadian markets and therefore they face “regulatory challenges.”

The report says governments should review their regulations for “unintended consequences.”

And the Canadian Food Inspection Agency needs to “redefine its culture and the way it interacts with individual businesses, as well as sectors, through changing how the CFIA’s performance is measured,” says the report.

Good luck on that one! There are a host of federal government agencies that have long been in dire need of cultural transformation, but continue to flounder - immigration, Indian affairs and employment insurance, to name only a few.

Farmers and food processors find the CFIA to be “more of an obstacle than a valued service provider,” says the report. No kidding!

The study team reviewed the literature available and conducted many interviews with business leaders, says the introduction to the executive summary.

The team chose red meats produced, processed and marketed to meet religious law, such as halal standards for Muslims, and goat meat and products.

It also looked into buckwheat and pulses for the gluten-free market and shellfish and Kazunoko from Canada’s East and West coasts.

The executive summary is posted on the George Morris Centre website.

                                    

Beware CFIA powers

Lawyer Ron Doering, former head of the Canadian Food Inspection Agency, says the civil servants who work there have tremendous clout, far beyond normal and even beyond police forces.

For example, they have the power to come on farms, search everywhere for anything, seize livestock, plants and records, detain (hold them) indefinitely and destroy them.

They don’t need a search warrant, as do the police, to do all of this.

There were no administrative appeal systems until about a week ago. A number of farm organizations, such as the Canadian Cattlemen’s Association, the National Pork Council and the Canadian Meat Council, immediately praised Agriculture Minister Gerry Ritz for setting up an office to handle complaints, plus a statement of rights and responsibilities.

It took a decade to get that much accountability into place.

Before that, appeals had to go to a court which, when you’re fighting government lawyers with unlimited resources, can be a long, frustrating and very expensive experience.

The new complaints office comes at a time when, Doering said in a column, “increasingly, more than it should, the CFIA has been charging people in criminal courts for what are often minor infractions.”

In court they need only prove the facts, not criminal intent, Doering notes. The result after conviction is a criminal record.

Maple Lodge Farms Ltd. now has a criminal record after the CFIA gained convictions in Brampton court for failing to meet the standards for welfare when trucking chickens to its processing plant, including fragile spent hens.

The company faces scores of additional charges for similar chicken-trucking offences. It has, understandably, decided to buy new chicken-hauling carts with drawers.

Doering did not mention that there is an appeal process available to meat-packing companies that are fined for infractions. It’s so secret that I had never heard of its existence until about a week ago.

As Doering headlined his column: “Be afraid. Be very afraid.”

And look well beyond the fluffy news releases about the new office to handle complaints.

                                   

Secrets unveiled

A friend sent me a batch of information the Canadian Food Inspection Agency released only because somebody had filed an Access-to-Information request.

I learned that:

• ·      Maple Leaf Foods Inc. complained that a provincially-inspected meat-packing plant won the contract to supply box lunches for the military, and that the CFIA said that’s ok since the troops live in Ontario where the meat-packing plant in question is under provincial inspection.
• 
  
• ·      CFIA is reviewing its internal governance because, frankly, it screwed up in responding to the Listeria monocytogenes food-poisoning situation in which 23 Canadians died because they ate Maple Leaf products.

·      CFIA has hired McMaster University to determine whether Aptamar technology can be used to develop a rapid test for Listeria monocytogenes.

·      Maple Leaf wanted the CFIA to use rapid-detection tests available from the U.S. for Listeria monocytogenes so it wouldn’t have to sit on products awaiting test results.

·      Canadian meat packers are the most likely ones to complain to the CFIA that imported products fail to meet Canadian labeling requirements.

·      Maple Leaf complained that it is not allowed to use the cans that competitors from other countries use to package meats available in Canadian stores. The CFIA replied that we sign trade deals to accept the standards in place in the other countries. The CFIA said it is “taking steps” to level the playing field.

·      The CFIA admitted it screwed up when it stopped providing 72 hours notice to importers that their shipments could be subjected to inspection. Trouble is, there were no convenient places near border crossing points to conduct the inspections, unlike the situation in the U.S. where they do have convenient nearby testing facilities. The CFIA apparently jumped to correct gaffes only after the media embarrassed the bureaucrats.

·      The Canadian Poultry and Egg Processors Council complained that the CFIA responses to deads-on-arrival at chicken-processing plants are not the same across all regions of Canada. The CFIA apparently began cracking down in some regions, especially on spent hens, because it wants “to maintain public confidence”. Sounds like a knee-jerk reaction to animal activists.

·      The CFIA backed down on a Poultry Rejection Project after unionized veterinarians objected to shifting decisions on how to deal with rejected birds at processing plants from government to company staff.

·      The Canadian Poultry and Egg Processors Council complained about having to meet traceability standards that don’t yet apply to back-yard flocks.

·      The CFIA’s top brass has regular meeting with the Canadian Poultry and Egg Processors Council and the Canadian Meat Council. It has also met with executives from Maple Leaf, Nestle, the deans of the five veterinary colleges, the Canadian Council of Grocery Distributors and the Retail Council of Canada.

·      There is a Canadian Agricultural Review Tribunal to which companies that have been fined by the CFIA can appeal.