COVID-19 angel protection

Feds double domestic food aid

Agriculture Minister Marie-Claude Bibeau announced the Emergency Food Reserve Fund is being doubled to $200 million.

The new funding will provide $18.5 million to Food Banks Canada, $18.5 million to Breakfast Club of Canada, $8.9 million to Second Harvest, $8.9 million to Community Food Centres Canada, $8.85 million to the Salvation Army, and $1.34 million to La Tablée des Chefs.

A further $5 million will be allocated from reserve funds.

Bibeau made the announcement, alongside Indigenous Services Minister Marc Miller and Northern Affairs Minister Daniel Vandal, during a roundtable event with front-line volunteers and food security organization workers from across Canada.

During the roundtable people heard about the work being done by volunteers and workers who  face more demands with fewer resources.

The COVID-19 pandemic has heightened food security concerns, particularly in northern and Indigenous communities. Local food organizations are often strained to find adequate volunteers and staff.

Indigenous Services Canada will use $30 million of the new funding to bolster its Indigenous Community Support Fund, bringing this fund’s total to $1.1 billion.

Bibeau hails export performance

Federal Agriculture Minister Marie-Claude Bibeau is praising Canadian agriculture for being on pace to set another export record this year.

Last year’s record was $67 billion and Bibeau said this year we are making significant progress towards our goal of $75 billion by 2025.

She said the government helped by keeping borders open for trade and by stepping up to ensure that farmers could get temporary foreign workers.

“Our government has implemented major trade agreements that give Canadian agri-food exporters access to key markets . . . (and now) about three-quarters of our agri-food trade is covered by one of our trade agreements,” she said in a statement.

Because the pandemic made sales meetings difficult “we have pivoted our programs to support online marketing initiatives. We launched a digital update of our Canada Brand. We also expanded the CanExport program to help businesses with digital marketing initiatives.”

CanExport offers up to $75,000 to small and medium-sized businesses to tap into export markets.

Another $1.1 billion is in the budget to pursue an aggressive Export Diversification Strategy.

She said Canadian farmers and food businesses play by the rules of international trade, and we continue to support the World Trade Organization in upholding a rules-based trading system and enforcing those rules. 

Canada launched the “Ottawa Group” in 2018 because countries need a way to settle trade disputes after the United States failed to appoint people to do that work through the World Trade Organization.

Bibeau said Canada continues “to champion a predictable and transparent international trade environment. This is vital to our own COVID-19 recovery, and to global food security.”

                           

 

 

 

Chapman’s Ice Cream helps store COVID-19 vaccines

Chapman’s Ice Cream of Markdale has acquired two freezers it is making available to store Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine for Grey County.

"We moved pretty quickly a few weeks ago, as soon as we saw that the Pfizer vaccine was going to need temperatures of colder than - 70 C, and we started looking around for a unit that could do what we had wanted," said company vice-president Ashley Chapman.

“My parents are seniors. I live in this community. I live in this area. And anything I can do to protect the people that I love around me, I'm just going to do it," he said.

In fact, Chapman’s stepped up in the 1980s to offer its facilities when Canada was developing a national pandemic response plan.

Cheese makers worry about dry ice shortage

Cheese makers in Wisconsin are worried that they might not be able to get all the dry ice they need because it’s needed for handling Pfizer-BioNTech’s COVID-19 vaccine.

In a letter dated December 4, the Wisconsin Cheesemakers Association (WCMA) told top officials at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Department of Defense and Department of Health and Human Services that they welcome and applaud the swift distribution of Covid-19 vaccines, but are concerned that the dry ice needed to keep these vaccines viable could harm the dairy industry and asked for help to make sure that doesn’t happen.

The cheese makers need dry ice to keep the bacterial cultures that are key to making cheeses, yogourts and similar dairy products.

The association said there is no substitute for dry ice for the global storage and distribution of dairy cultures.

Better Beef closed

Better Beef is closing down its beef-packing plant in Guelph for an indefinite time.

Fifty-seven workers have tested positive for COVID-19 and the company is asking any employee who had contact with infected workers to get tested.

The company stopped slaughtering and is spending the rest of today to process carcasses and then everything will be shut down.

Beef Farmers of Ontario and the Ontario Cattle Feeders Association are asking the federal and provincial governments to activate a fund set up earlier this year to help farmers whose livestock can’t be marketed because packing plants are closed or slowed down by COVID-19.

Beef Farmers of Ontario issued a statement saying “our highest priority is to acknowledge the health of the employees and their families, and we sincerely hope all affected individuals recover well from the virus.”

Beef Farmers of Ontario encouraged its members to contact their financial institution “to discuss options for short-term support.”

It also said “if farmers are in need of a safe and judgement-free space to talk, we encourage them to call CrisisServicesCanada(1.833.456.4566) where trained responders are available at all day and night.

Better Beef, owned by Cargill, is the largest beef-packing plant east of Alberta and one of very few in Ontario that are federally-inspected and able to sell beef out of the province.

There was already a lack of slaughter capacity in Ontario before this closure.

                           

Hog farm in Lambton has PED

 

A finishing operation in Lambton County has an outbreak of Porcine Epidemic Diarrhea virus.

It is the first case since Nov. 27 in in Niagara area and since Aug. 28 at a farrow-to-finish operation in Middlesex County.