Denys, Lenders elected leaders for veggie board

Michael Denys of Wallaceburg and Mike Lenders of Ilderton have been elected vice-chairmen of the Ontario Vegetable Processing Marketing Board.

They join Dave Hope, a former assistant deputy minister at the Ontario Ministry of Agriculture.

Food and Rural Affairs, who was appointed chairman of the board a few days earlier. 

He took over from Suzanne Von Bommel who has been given a new job advising the Ontario Farm Products Marketing Commission about reducing regulations and increasing efficiencies at marketing boards.

The veggie board was dismissed by the commission when it was not satisfied that enough was being done to keep processors from leaving the province and vice-chairman Elmer Buchanan took over as chairman of the board and negotiated contracts with processors.

The commission retains the right to name the chairman, but there is a process, now completed, to enable growers to elect all other board directors.

Waterloo finisher has PED

A hog finishing operation in the Waterloo Region has Porcine Epidemic Diarrhea virus, according to the Ontario Pork website.

Although the website says it was Feb. 1, it did not appear on the website until Feb. 6.

It is the 119^th case in the province.

In Alberta, officials say they have had no more outbreaks since the first in that province in late January.

Chinese hold up canola shipments

Chinese port authorities are holding up shipments of Canadian canola, reports Reuters news agency

It said the delays are linked to the Canadian arrest of Huawei chief financial officer Meng Wanzhou in December for extradition to the U.S.

Reuters reports that some Chinese importers are hesitating to buy from Canada, even though it is their biggest supplier. Reuters said it interviewed a dozen traders.

Canola is backed up in ports while Chinese officials take longer than usual to check issues such as for GMO seed in the shipment.

Milk sickened 30, killed four in Ontario

Dr. Doug Powell has posted a report on his Barfblog internet site this week documenting how researchers examined Listeria monocytogenes deaths and hospitalizations eventually linked to chocolate milk in Ontario.

There were two waves between November, 2015, and June, 2016, and the source was difficult to track down, first because there was a Listeria outbreak linked to leafy greens about the same time, second because there were some other false leads.

Eventually investigators found stale milk in a refrigerator of one of the patients and identified the exact strain of Listeria involved in the other cases.

But the wrapping on the four-litre pouch pack was missing, so it took more sleuthing to trace it to the supermarket chain, which was not named in the scientific journal report, from which all the patients and victims bought chocolate milk.

Eventually it was traced to the Neilson plant in Georgetown.

The scientific report says this situation illustrates how difficult it can be to track down the source of an outbreak of food poisoning.

Dr. Powell says the lack of information for the public is unfortunately typical for the Public Health Agency of Canada.

Farmers concerned about seed royalties

The federal government is proposing changes that would force farmers to pay royalties on all the seed they buy and allows companies marketing new varieties to charge as much as they want.

Farmers are objecting during the period of consultations, so one of the counter-proposals is to form an advisory group of farmers to manage the proposed royalties system.

“That’s something we’ve been giving a lot of thought to as a potential mechanism for that ongoing producer involvement,” said Anthony Parker, commissioner of the Canadian Food Inspection Agency’s Plant Breeders’ Rights office.

Parker was in Brandon in late January to inform producers about the potential changes to the Plant Breeders’ Rights Act.

A coalition of seed industry groups known as Seed Synergy says creating additional value in the Canadian seed sector will lead to greater levels of investment in seed breeding programs. They’ve been pushing for changes, and two proposals have been discussed at meetings across Canada:

• collecting royalties when farmers sell and deliver grain.

• charging an annual fee to cover farm-saved seed.

Parker said the proposal requires farmers to be members of the Plant Breeder’s Rights advisory committee. If changes to the royalty system move forward, the committee could be a tool for producers to have input and oversight.

“That we bring (in) farmers and say, ‘let’s monitor how is the performance of the system working, is it achieving the desired outcomes?” Parker said.

“Is it accomplishing the balance that we’re looking for, where breeders are benefitting but also producers are benefitting (for better crop varieties).”

A range of $1 to $3 per tonne of grain produced, or per acre or tonne of seed used, have been suggested as possible royalty rates. Some producers believe the rate should be capped, but the seed companies oppose caps..

“The problem with a maximum is what happens if someone brings forward a trait that has significantly more value?” said Todd Hyra, western business manager with Secan, the largest supplier of certified seed to Canadian farmers.

“I wouldn’t want to have somebody hamstrung.”

However, Hyra does support other ways to limit royalty payments, such as basing them on acres rather than on tonnes of production or amount of planted seed

Troy Snobelen dies in accident

Troy Snobelen, president and chief executive officer of Snobelen Farms, has died in a snowmobile accident.

Snobelen Farms was started by his parents who grew it into a large business handling grains and oilseeds in Huron County.

 The company has six facilities across central and southwestern Ontario and is a major processor and exporter of food-grade soy beans.

The South Bruce Ontario Provincial Police reported that Snobelen died after a crash on Saturday evening in Huron-Kinloss.

            

Hope named chair of veggie board

Dave Hope has been appointed chairman of the Ontario Processing Vegetable Growers Board.

He takes over from Suzanne Van Bommel who has been appointed a special advisor to the Ontario Farm Products Marketing Commission with a view to reducing marketing board regulations and improving efficiencies.

Hope is a former employee of the Ontario Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs.

Hope takes over as the vegetable board is about to hold its annual meeting and return to a fully-elected board of directors, albeit under the choice of Ontario Agriculture Minister Ernie Hardeman as chairman.