Avian flu outbreak in Oxford County

 

There has been an outbreak of highly-pathogenic avian influenza on a commercial poultry farm in Oxford County.

There are about 4,000 birds on the farm.

It is the second outbreak in Ontario this week and this year.

Caledon sued over 5,000-acre expansion

 

Democracy Caledon has filed a lawsuit against the township of Caledon over 5,000 acres of farmland the province added for housing development.

Mayor Annette Groves said the township will vigorously defend itself.

The lawsuit cites 12 zoning bylaws passed this summer to fast-track housing developments.

Democracy Caledon filed the notice of application in the Ontario Court of Justice Dec. 5, arguing council’s approval of the zoning bylaws doesn’t conform to the official plans of Caledon and Peel Region and can be quashed for illegality under Section 273 of the Municipal Act.

In a news release Tuesday, the town countered that the bylaws were enacted “in accordance with the provincial legislation and in keeping with all procedural requirements of both the Planning Act and the Municipal Act.”

The bylaws would rezone 5,000 acres of land, leapfrogging several steps in the planning process to build 35,000 new housing units.

Democracy Caledon said the rezonings threaten farmland, the Greenbelt and ratepayers’ tax bills.

Caledon Mayor Annette Groves said the residents’ group is using “inaccurate and misleading information” to raise fears in the community. 

She said “our solicitors have advised that this lawsuit is completely without merit, and the town will be vigorously defending it.”

The town said that all lands addressed by the 12 zoning bylaws sit within Caledon’s urban boundary or are adjacent to an existing settlement area.

Valerie M’Garry named drainage referee

 

 

Valerie M’Garry, a lawyer from Sarnia, has been named Ontario’s drainage referee.

She was solicitor for Sairnia for 10 years, including when it was merged with Clearwater.

The drainage referee hears appeals on the legal aspects of drainage work as well as appeals from drainage decisions by the Onario Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Agribusiness Appeal Tribunal.

The appointment was made by OMAFA.

Hormel settles price-fixing lawsuit

 

Hormel Foods has paid $2.4 million to settle its part of a pork price-fixing lawsuit that was filed against the largest pork packing companies in the United States.

A Minnesota federal judge has approved the deal.

The case was part of a larger legal action involving 27 consolidated cases and 146 parties. The allegations centered on claims that pork producers conspired to fix prices, with the case initially consolidated in December, 2022.

British research uses pigs for vaccination study

British researchers have used pigs to establish that delivering vaccines by breath is a viable alternative to injection.

“This is an important step toward human research,” Pirbright Institute at the University of Oxford said in a release. “Interest in administering vaccines mucosally, rather than by intramuscular injections, has been growing since the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic was declared in 2020.”

“Comprehensive measurement of immune responses in human lungs is not possible,” the researchers said, so they used pigs whose respiratory tract is similar to humans.

Samples collected from both the lungs and blood of vaccinated pigs, aided by mathematical modelling, showed that lung responses can be predicted from blood tests, making it easier to assess vaccine effectiveness in humans, the release said.

“To bring future vaccines to market, it is critical to define the correlates of protection—markers that can reliably predict the effectiveness of the vaccine, in humans,” said Dr. Simon Gubbins, head of transmission biology at The Pirbright Institute.

The findings of this study, published in Frontiers in Immunology have far-reaching implications for the future development of mucosally-administered vaccines in clinical trials, Pirbright said. The pig model’s ability to closely mimic human immune responses to respiratory infections make it an ideal platform for testing vaccine efficacy.

“The research found that immune responses in the blood could reliably reflect those in the lungs, thus offering a practical way to assess the effectiveness of vaccines targeting the respiratory system,” said Dame Sarah Gilbert, professor of vaccinology at the Pandemic Sciences Institute at the University of Oxford.

“The findings provide critical insights into how immune responses can be measured from easily accessible blood samples and are a foundation for future testing of mucosally administered vaccines in clinical trials,” she said.

Milk regulation due for update

 

The Ontario Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Agribusiness intends to amend the Milk Act and the Food Safety and Quality Act.

The changes address situations that have evolved.

The ministry says the milk components found in dairy products no longer strictly come from unprocessed raw milk and cream - milk ingredients (rather than raw milk) are increasingly used by processors in the manufacturing of dairy products. 

Legislation will be needed to make that change.

It is also moving to extend marketing board pricing controls to ingredients.

This will “support consistency in the end use pricing of milk products,” it said.

“The proposed amendments would expand the definition of a regulated product to include milk products, or milk products used as ingredients in processing. 

"Subsequent amendments to regulations under the Act would provide DFO (Dairy Farmers of Ontario marketing board) with authority to licence any person marketing milk products and ensure their compliance with the end use pricing regime. 

“These proposed amendments seek to safeguard the integrity of the supply management system, including creating uniform market conditions for processors whether they buy milk from DFO or not,” it said in its posting on the province’s regulatory registry.

OMAFA also said “there is inconsistent regulatory food safety oversight of milk in Ontario because the Milk Act does not provide for oversight of the production, transportation or processing of milk from species other than cow and goat. This situation persists even though the same food safety risks exist for milk from different species (cow, goat, sheep, water buffalo). 

“Furthermore, the food safety policy for cow and goat milk is developed by the Ontario Farm products Marketing Commission (OFPMC) - an agency comprised of part-time appointees of the Lieutenant Governor in Council (LGIC often referred to as the cabinet) where food safety is not part of its core mandate.“

OMAFA is proposing to amend the Milk Act and the FSQA (Food Safety and Quality Act) to enable the transfer of food safety and quality provisions from the Milk Act and its regulations to future regulations under the FSQA.

“This would allow for the future development of modern, outcome-based dairy food safety regulations for milk and milk products from all species under a more suitable statute (FSQA) made by the LGIC (cabinet), as is the case with all other foods in Ontario. 

Although it does not explicity say so, the Ontario Farm Product Marketing Commission would no longer delegate milk inspection and dairy farm standards and inspection to the milk board.

It's not clear from the proposals whether there would continue to be that delegation under the Food Safety and Quality Act.

OMAFA said it “will look for appropriate opportunities to reduce regulatory compliance obligations for businesses as a part of the legislative alignment while continuing to safeguard the public interest. 

The Milk Act would continue to focus on the regulated marketing of cow milk.”

It doesn't look like Premier Doug Ford had a hand in these proposals, but he might learn that they won't go down easily or well with the rural constituencies that account for his majority.

Man deathly sick with bird flu

A patient in Louisiana was hospitalized with a severe case of avian influenza (H5N1), marking the first time a person has fallen severely ill with the virus in the United States. There is a similar case in British Columbia where a young man is in hospital.

The United States Centers for Disease Control there have been 61 human infections with avian influenza, but none of them serious.

On a call with reporters, Demetre Daskalakis, CDC Director of the National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases, said

the Louisiana patient is believed to have been exposed to sick or dead birds in backyard flocks, the first such linkage in the U.S. They were not commercial poultry and were not exposed to dairy cows or related products.

CDC is conducting additional genomic sequencing to isolate virus from clinical specimens from the Louisiana patient, they said.

Officials noted the D1.1 strain of H5N1 is different from the B3.13 genotype detected in dairy cows, sporadic human cases in multiple states, and some poultry outbreaks in the U.S.  

No person-to-person spread of H5 bird flu has been detected.