AAFC cuts impact 1,000-plus staff, union says

 

The Agriculture Union which represents workers at the federal agriculture department said the government cuts will impact “roughly 1,043” people.

That’s far more than the department’s announcement that 650 will be cut.

The union also said it got no advance notice of the plans to close seven research facilities and no details about any of the layoffs.

It said the cuts are not fair because Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada already decreased its employee count by 14 per cent between 2012 and 2025 while the government’s total staffing increased by 30 per cent.

“Our union represents 2,500 employees at AAFC, all of whom are essential to the health and resilience of our agricultural sector,” the union said.

It said 494 of its members are affected by this round of cuts.

“Our AAFC members are the backbone of Canadian agriculture research. They assist farmers by mitigating the impacts of climate change and drought, performing groundbreaking research, and keeping our food production industries competitive on a global scale."

“These cuts will sabotage important gains we’ve made in agricultural research and set research on Canadian food products back by decades,” said Milton Dyck, national president of the Agriculture Union. 

“We have been warning the federal government for months about cutting an already-decimated department. There is simply no more room to cut,” he said.

Swine vets say new vaccines could help

 Vaccines to control bacterial diseases would bring major benefits, a survey of 19 swine veterinarians across the United States has found.

The results identified Streptococcus suis, Escherichia coli, Mycoplasma hyopneumoniae, and Glaesserella parasuis as the most critical pathogens needing improved vaccines. 

Veterinarians anticipated significant improvements in vaccine efficacy for S. suis and E. coli during the nursery stage and expressed a willingness to pay almost two per cent more than current prices.

While expectations for M. hyo vaccine improvements were not significant, veterinarians expressed the willingness to pay 4.2 times the current price because it could eradicate this disease.

One of the major benefits would be reduction of antibiotics to control these diseases.

Trucks’ electricity demand over-estimated

 A study by the Pembina Institute found that electricity demand for electric trucks has been overestimated resulting in calls for 60 to 75 per cent more infrastructure than could be needed.

The study shows that if Toronto reaches a 35 per cent electric truck share by 2030, electric medium- and heavy-duty vehicles would account for less than 1.5 per cent of current daily electricity consumption and peak demand. That increase falls well within normal day-to-day fluctuations on the grid.  

The research also found that focusing early electrification on lighter trucks, targeting charger deployment to high-traffic locations, enabling shared charging across fleets and shifting more charging to overnight depot locations, cities can significantly reduce infrastructure costs without slowing adoption. 

Across Toronto, Brampton, Mississauga, Hamilton and Markham, these strategies together could cut total charging infrastructure costs by 60 to 75 per cent by 2030, the report said. That represents roughly $1 billion in cumulative investment savings.  

“When planning assumes that light delivery vans and heavy long-haul trucks electrify at the same rate, it overstates near-term electricity demand and charger costs,” said Chandan Bhardwaj, senior transportation analyst with the Pembina Institute.

“Our analysis of real-world truck travel data shows that early electrification is led by lighter trucks, which require far less charging power. That distinction has major implications for how municipalities and utilities plan grid investment today,” he said.

This is the first study of electrification of trucks in Canada.

Pizza Pops on recall

 

Ten types of Pillsbury Pizza Pops are on recall because they might be contaminated with E. coli food-poisoning bacteria.

Health Canada reports that 23 people from coast to coast have been infected. Two are in Ontario.

The Canadian Food Inspection Agency tested the Pizza Pops and identified the bacterial contamination.

Fed’s Guelph research centre to close

The federal agriculture department said a research center in Guelph is one of seven research centres across Canada that intends to close.

The only Agriculture and Agri-Food research centre in Guelph was opened in 1997. 

Other main research centers on the hit list are at Quebec City and Lacombe, Alta.

Satellite research farms at Nappan, N.S., Scott, Sask., Indian Head, Sask. and Portage la Prairie, Man., will also close.

 

The AAFC said it will remain Canada’s largest agricultural research organization, with 17 research centres nationwide and research farmland in every province. 

There are no imminent site closures, and any wind-down of scientific operations would follow a careful decision process that could take up to 12 months. Many employees may be retained, reassigned, or relocated. It is too early to determine final workforce impacts.

 

Keith Currie, President of the Canadian Federation of Agriculture (CFA) called the cutbacks a “necessary evil”.

“There’s nothing wrong with efficiencies,” Currie said. “And if … there were hirings that didn’t make sense, taking a look at it and getting leaner and meaner, I think that’s what we do in business. That’s what you do on our farms.”

Tyler McCann, managing director of the Canadian Agri-Food Policy Institute told a reporter for Glacier News “hopefully this reminds everyone else in the ag ecosystem that research and development and innovation is critical to competitiveness, and we need to double down on making that a priority going forward.”

It could be a chance for the AAFC to do more with less. McCann said there is an argument to be made that the department “had too broad of a research footprint for the research funding envelope that they had.

“What will determine whether or not we can be competitive at a time of cuts is whether or not they’re going to make other changes to how they fund and do research to streamline and improve the efficiency of the work that they do.

“That is a real opportunity for governments and the stakeholder community around them to double down on innovation and to say, yes, we know that (AAFC) shrank its footprint, but in the Next Policy Framework, for the next five years, governments are going to commit more resources and more energy and more focus to innovation,” McCann said.

The Canadian Wheat Research Coalition said the staff cuts and resulting impacts are a tremendous loss for the industry.

“It is a loss of not only expertise and people who have contributed to farmers’ success, but also of agricultural research capacity that is crucial to fueling innovation and maintaining progress throughout the industry,” said chair Jocelyn Velestuk in a news release.

The feds have been chipping away on research for 75 years, forgetting that it was once the nation's largest and oldest research institutions and responsible for Canada's world lead in agriculture quality and success.

During that same 75 years subsidies and supply management have taken precedence and Canada's leadership has been lost.

         

More hog disease outbreaks

 

Swine Health Ontario reports outbreaks of porcine epidemic diarrhea at a nursery barn in Perth County and a finisher farm in Oxford.

It reported an outbreak of porcine deltacoronavirus on a farrow-to-finish barn in Perth County.

Chinese supplier implicated in massive infant formula recalls

 

A Chinese supplier of an ingredient that contained cereulide which proved to be toxic has been implicated in the massive global recalls of infant formulas made by Nestlé, Danone and Lactalis.

Cereeulide can cause vomiting and diarrhea.

The situation has prompted European officials to increase their scrutiny of ingredients.

 

So far there has been no indication that any of the recalls are of products distributed in Canada.