Dairy farmers fight for farm survival

 

Chantelle Leslie and Eric Leach are fighting against long odds to save their dairy farm.

They have lost their milk board licence after repeated high somatic cell counts and freezing point infractions.

Their case is now before the Ontario Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs Appeal Tribunal which will likely issue a decision before fall, although chairman Glenn Walker said the arguments presented by lawyers for the farmers and the Dairy Farmers of Ontario marketing board are complex and will take time to deliberate.

Lawyer Andrew Paterson pleaded for another chance to establish that they can meet quality standards.

They are both children of dairy-farming families and have 20 years of dairy farming experience of their own.

And he argued that the stresses involved with their situation have affected their mental health and the milk board could grant some form of accommodation.

Lawyer Geoffrey Spurr for the milk board argued that they were granted fair hearings and that they did not raise mental health as a factor until reaching the appeal tribunal stage. He said at best they should only expect a referral back to the milk board so it could deliberate over the issue of mental health and potential accommodations.

But he said there is no guarantee they would be satisfied by what the milk board would decide and the issue might end up as another appeal to the tribunal.

One relief they seek is to farm in a shared facility until they can get back on their feet, but Spurr said they have not applied to the milk board for that accommodation.

Tribunal member and dairy farmer Judy Dirksen questioned how they can recover because they have sold off quota and are now down to 16 kilograms and still face the challenges of meeting milk quality standards.

They have had their equipment repaired twice to address the freezing-point penalties and might face another issue in the future which would be a third milk quality infraction resulting in the loss of their licence.

Dirksen she knows from experience that maintaining a perfect somatic cell count quality standard record is challenging.

 Pederson drew attention to tribunal testimony by a milk inspector that about 15 per cent of the province’s 3,600 producers every year fall short on milk quality standards such as somatic cell counts. 

The milk board has a three strikes and you're out policy for failing to meet Grade A milk standards.

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Building codes under review

 

The Ontario Ministry of Municipal Affairs and Housing is inviting ideas to reduce building code regulations.

In a posting on the Environmental Registry of Ontario, the ministry said “we want your feedback on Ontario’s Building Code review so we can identify ways to reduce unnecessary costs, delays, complexity, and administrative burden, while maintaining health, safety, accessibility, and performance outcomes.”

The invitation is open until Aug. 14.

No major U.S. meat packers adopt COOL labels

 

None of the dominant meat packers in the United States have joined those who are going to label meat “Product of U.S.”

Those who have signed on with the U.S. Department of Agriculture are these 10:

•      Harris Ranch

•      One World Beef

• Upper Iowa Beef
• American Foods Group (AFG)
• Agri Beef
• FPL Food 
• Hadrick Farms
• Fort Worth Meats
• Wholestone Farms
• Harrison’s Poultry

Canadians have opposed labelling meats for country of origin because it believes some packing plants that buy Canadian livestock would stop because it would require keeping separate storage and processing lines.

Canada successfully challenged two attempts to force country of origin meat labelling. The current country-of-origin labelling is voluntary.

Ontario chicken lagging

 

The national supply-management agency for chicken has set a production goal of 5.75 per cent above base quota for October 18 to December 12, but Ontario gets only a 5.5 per cent increase.

The Ontario Chicken Farmers marketing board said demand for chicken continues to be strong. This is supported by competing meat prices, steady per capita consumption and overall positive economic indicators. 

CFIA ready to relax BSE beef bans

 

The Canadian Food Inspection Agency is considering relaxing bans on specified risk materials from beef so they could once again be included in non-ruminant livestock feed, pet food and fertilizer.

The bans went into effect after bovine spongiform encephalopathy was identified in t May, 2003, in the brain tissue of a cow that died in Alberta.

Federal Agriculture Minister Heath MacDonald said lifting the bans will make it easier for Canadian beef processors to compete with the U.S.

Canada’s current enhanced feed ban took effect in 2007 to persuade the U.S. and other countries to resume buying Canadian beef.

Since 2021, Canada is considered to have negligible risk status for BSE, according to the World Organization for Animal Health, and the trading bans have been lifted.

The change in regulations would allow the sale of skulls, eyes, the nervous system, tonsils and the distal ileum portion of the small intestine the distal ileums from cattle less than 30 months old.

All of these items will still be banned from human food.

Bans will remain in effect brains and spinal cords from cattle more than 30 months old.

Beef processors and abattoirs will need a permit from the CFIA to separate and use the eligible parts from cattle aged 30 months or older.

CFIA has opened public consultation on the proposed changes. It closes Sept. 9.

Chief executive officer Andrea Brocklebank of the Canadian Cattle Association said “This is good news for our industry and our competitiveness.”

The Canadian Meat Council said the changes include “long-sought updates” to SRM requirements.

Additional costs related to removal and disposal of SRMs in Canada are estimated to cost an average of $167 per tonne, the CCA and CMC said.

Under today’s requirements, Canadian processors must discard about 57 kilograms of materials per carcass, compared to about three in the U.S.

Spud rejects could be valuable

Quebec startup ExclusiVert of Quebec is making a mobile starch extraction unit that travels from farm to farm to process cull potatoes into starch for bioplastics, paper manufacturing and other industrial products.

According to Dr. Said Elkoun, scientific director at ExclusiVert and professor at the University of Sherbrooke, Canada produces about six million tonnes of potatoes annually, and roughly 10 per cent never reach the fresh market because the potatoes are undersized, misshapen or otherwise unsuitable for sale. 

In Quebec alone he estimates between 50,000 and 65,000 tonnes of potatoes fall into that category each year.

“We saw those figures and thought there was something we could do,” Elkoun said, referring to ExclusiVert co-founders Zedou Mouliom Atangana and Juliette Clairence Mango. 

“Our idea was to move the process to the farmers instead of moving the potatoes to the factory.”

They came up with the idea based on work in Cameroon, Africa, to extract starch from cassava.

 

 

 

The National Farmers Union has made a plea for national food sovereignty in its response to Prime Minister Mark Carney’s food policy announcement and the opening of negotiations for the next five-year food policy framework.

growing local markets and regional trade, food security through food sovereignty, long-term public agriculture research and climate resilience.

Farmers need a food sovereignty policy that supports new farmers, a diversity of farm products and practices, and fair prices for the food they produce for both domestic and export markets, the NFU said.

 

The NFU is encouraging the federal, provincial and territorial ministers of agriculture to define food sovereignty as “the right of peoples to healthy and culturally appropriate food produced through ecologically sound and sustainable methods, and their right to define their own food and agriculture systems.”

 

“A successful food sovereignty policy will address corporate power in the agriculture sector, declining farm incomes, generational renewal, and climate resilience,” said NFU vice-president Phil Mount.

 

The next five-year policy must be guided by the principles of resilience, renewal, sovereignty, and diversity,” said NFU president Jenn Pfenning,.

 

The NFU said it must prioritize five policy pillars: generational renewal,  growing local markets and regional trade, food security through food sovereignty, long-term public agriculture research and climate resilience.

What's not to like about all that? Yet the NFU is often shrugged off as too radically left wing.