The Canadian Food Inspection Agency has cancelled the licence held by TC Distributor Inc. of North York.
It is extreme punishment because the CFIA usually follows up on warnings with a suspension of a licence until compliance is achieved.
In this case the CFIA said TC Distributor mislabeled or did not label meat products from a country not approved by the CFIA.
Halton Hills council has voted unanimously to ask that property identification numbers be issued for fields and woodlots that are far from numbered buildings.
Their call comes after 911 emergency responders had difficulty locating a seven-year old Emily Trudeau who was in a field in Hastings County.
That 2014 incident has prompted other municipal councils to make similar requests for more property identification numbers to help emergency responders to 911 calls.
There is a recall for Les Fermes Lufa brand broccoli that was sold online to customers in Ontario and Quebec.
The company initiated the recall which the Canadian Food Inspection Agency is monitoring because E. coli and other food-poisoning bacteria were found in the broccoli.
Sunrise Foods is going to build a $100-million poultry processing plant at Woodstock Ont., the mayor announced.
Sunrise Foods was founded by organic farmers based in Saskatchewan, Canada.
As the organic industry has evolved, it has grown into the largest organic agri-trading company in the world, Sunrise says on its website.
It has facilities in Ontario in Milton and Waterloo.
The announcement said nothing about the Ontario Chicken Farmers marketing board which regulates how many chickens each processing company can buy from farmers,
That plant supply quota system was established as part of a deal to end competitive purchasing as premium prices and to stop companies from buying chickens from Quebec producers and Quebec procesdsrs from buying from Ontario farmers.
That is exactly what has happened, it said about a regulation recently posted in the federal government’s Gazette.
“It is now illegal for farmers who purchase these PBR-protected varieties to use seed, cuttings, tubers or bulbs they harvest to grow future crops on their own farms,” the NFU said.
It said this benefits six multinational seed companies (Bayer, Corteva, Syngenta, BASF, Limagrain and KWS) who control 64 per cent of the global commercial seed market.
It said most vegetable seed used by Canadian farmers is bred and sold by these corporations, grown abroad, and imported.
“Eliminating Farmers’ Privilege on hybrid varieties indicates how excessive industry demands are – they feel the need to legally eliminate the practice of seed-saving which is already accomplished biologically,” said Terry Boehm, former NFU president.
At the same time, after decades of budget cut-backs and austerity measures, the drastic cuts to Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada (AAFC) research capacity announced in January directly attack public plant breeding that has been the backbone of Canada’s agricultural economy for 140 years, the NFU said.
If the government does not reverse these plans, the cuts will eliminate key scientific positions and destroy the network of specialized plots of land with representative soil types and growing conditions needed to test potential varieties in the real-life conditions farmers face, it said.
Eliminating critical parts of our public plant breeding capacity hampers development of high-quality, lower-cost publicly bred seed and further concentrates power over Canada’s seed system in the hands of large private seed companies, it said.
“It appears that the AAFC cuts and this regulatory change go hand in hand,” said Boehm. “The government is dismantling a public plant breeding system that has served Canadian farmers for generations to make Canada’s seed sector more profitable for large private companies.
“The result will be fewer farmer-focused varieties, higher seed costs, and greater dependence on foreign-owned seed corporations whose priorities are profit, not the long-term resilience of Canadian agriculture,” Boehm said.
AAFC usually has its expensive public relations machine crank out a news release to announce such important changes.
Not this time. Perhaps they're ashamed of this sell-out of farmers and the Canadian public.
Tyson Foods is paying $82.5 million (about $115 million Cdn) to settle a lawsuit charging it with price-fixing in marketing beef to direct purchasers.
A federal judge in Minnesota recently approved the settlement.
The deal was reached in December among Tyson Foods Inc., Tyson Fresh Meats Inc. and direct purchaser plaintiffs..
According to the order, the settlement followed arm’s-length negotiations conducted with the assistance of an experienced mediator. The court found the agreement fell “within the range of possible approval” and preliminarily determined it to be fair, reasonable and adequate.
Lorne Burnett of Toronto, has been appointed to a three-year term on the board of directors for the Ontario Food Terminal.
He is the chairman and chief executive officer of Burnac Produce.