Animal cruelty charges laid near Windsor

Two men from Tecumseh face animal cruelty charges after a five-month investigation by the Windsor-Essex Humane Society.

The society claims it is the worst and largest case in years.

They say animals were starving and near death and pigs were eating each other.

They said 10 dead pigs, two dead ducks and two sheep were found at the farm east of Windsor.

John Holland and Eddie Blake are charged with animal cruelty-related offences and are scheduled to appear in court July 29.

The situation seems to pale in comparison with the starvation and neglect found at farms near London owned by Jim Long, a high-profile internet commentator on the North American pork industry.

In that case, investigators found piles of dead pigs stacked behind barns and more than 1000 piglets decomposing in the manure tanks of five farms that were part of Long’s Wood Lynne Farms.

Long and six others faced 77 charges of animal cruelty 10 years ago.

Quebec poultry board cleans house

All of the top executives of the Quebec poultry marketing board are new, apparently a rebellion from the ranks against the Ontario-Quebec ban on interprovincial trade in live chicken that brought an abrupt end to premiums many had been garnering from processors.

Out-of-province processors were offering premiums over the official cost-of-production price set by the marketing boards in order to get enough chickens to meet their demand.

That prompted others to match the premiums to retain their supplies.

About 10 per cent of the chickens from each province was going to processors in the other province at the peak of the inter-provincial trade.

The ban on inter-provincial trade went into effect last year and has had many repercussions, such as CAMI International Poultry Inc. of Welland, Ont., being left with only about a quarter of its volume of chicken to meet the Asian-market demand in the Greater Toronto area for Hong-Kong dressed birds (feet and heads left on) and a lot of grumbling in the ranks about perceived problems with the marketing boards.

The new leaders of Les Élevateurs de Volailles du Quebec, which represents both chicken and turkey quota holders, are president Pierre-Luc Leblanc, vice-presidents Lise Saint George and Martin Lemieux and executive committee members Jean-Paul Bouchard and Louis-Phillippe Rouleau.

There are indications that frustrations are rising at the national level, including tensions between the federal government’s supervisory body, the Farm Products Council of Canada, and the Chicken Farmers of Canada national marketing agency.

The Chicken Farmers of Canada is also complaining about sharp increases in imports of older birds that the Canadian farmers think ought to face a tariff of about 285 per cent, but which Canadian Border Services Agency staff and those at the Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade have decided fall outside of the tariff protection.

They are being classified as “spent fowl” which are usually egg-laying birds that have reached the end of their productive lives.

There are also concerns about the increasing number of chicken-containing products that are skirting tariffs, and the sharp increase in import volumes once a product has been declared exempt from the tariffs.

The Canadian chicken farmers depend on tariffs to enable them to run supply management, meaning deciding first how much money they need to make a reasonable profit, then limiting production so they can maintain those prices.

Local strawberries disappoint

Ontario strawberries are delivering a hard knock on the buy local, buy fresh campaign.

They are frankly very disappointing.

My wife and I have three times chosen to buy quarts of locally-grown strawberries, and each time we have had to trash between a quarter and a half of them because they were soft or rotting.

The latest disappointment came at the Kitchener Farmers’ Market where prices for Ontario strawberries ranged from $4 to $8 per quart, the more expensive ones advertised as everbearing strawberries from Sudbury.

We bought a $4 quart and less than 12 hours later, when we were preparing a fresh strawberry pie, had to ditch more than half of them.

This was particularly galling because there were several displays of California strawberries at the same Kitchener Farmers’ Market with prices ranging from $2 per quart to three quarts for $5.

Their eye appeal was superb, far better than the Ontario strawberries.

My daughter, who bought them, said the taste gap between Ontario and California strawberries has narrowed to indistinguishable.

The California ones are firmer.

So I have a proposal.

Instead of investing in buy local, buy fresh campaigns, the Ontario Ministry of Agriculture and Food and Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada should use the money for research, development and extension.

Our growers need to be able to match the varieties coming from California.

That involves breeding varieties with potential to match the ones from California.

It also means management to be able to harvest and move them to market at a par with what California delivers.

As for price, I’m guessing that there are enough Ontarions who will pay a bit more for local berries to make it profitable for the local growers and marketers.

But certainly continuing with the performance we’re seeing Ontario with strawberries this year is guaranteed to get a lot of customers jumping off the buy local, buy fresh bandwagon.

Yes, there are probably weather-related reasons for the quality challenges this season, but why should customers care when they can buy imported berries of superior quality at lower prices?

Chicken board ordered to cut prices

The Ontario Farm Products Marketing Commission has ordered the chicken marketing board to reduce prices because it has been charging too much for feed.

The commission has ordered the board to change its pricing formula from a one-cent change in chicken prices for every $5 change in feed costs to $5.81 per tonne.

The chicken board says that the commission order will likely reduce prices for quota period A-120 (October-November), but said it can’t yet determine how much the decrease will be. It needs to await information on the weighted average prices of feed.

The chicken board has undertaken a comprehensive review of its entire pricing formula, but the commission ordered it to make an immediate change for feed costs.

It's a welcome sign that the commission is not an entirely useless, toothless entity.

Now I hope they can screw up their courage to settle the root issue of chicken shortages for the innovative niche-market processors.

How about scrapping plant-supply quotas and the ban on cross-border sales to Quebec, allowing a return of premiums, but reducing the formula-backed official minimum price of chicken by an amount equal to the weighted average of premiums?

Ryan Gosling wades into sow-crate controversy

Canadian actor Ryan Gosling has waded into the controversy over housing gestating sows in crates.

According to the National Farm Animal Care Council’s news release, Ryan says "I applaud NFACC for working to improve life for Canada's pigs, and hope it will close this dangerous loophole by disallowing the pork industry from confining pigs for weeks at a time - something that I would never dream of doing to [my dog,] George, and that no compassionate Canadian would ever do to any animal."

Gosling apparently does not know anything about why hog farmers started housing sows in stalls, nor does he seem to realize that sows will bully and injure each other if and when they are introduced to group housing.

Gestation crates are the hot-button issue in the hog-farming circles this summer.

A number of retail chains, such as Tim Horton’s and Loblaws, have set deadlines for when they will no longer buy pork from pigs raised on farms that house gestating sows in crates.

After years of negotiations, a group that has been pondering revisions to the Code of Practice for tending hogs, has recommended a much-abbreviated period during which housing sows in gestation crates will be acceptable.

A significant number of hog farmers have voiced concerns about that proposal which is up for public comment before a final draft is prepared later this year.

The Humane Society of the United States has led the push to ban the crates and pioneered the tactic of lobbying large-volume retail marketers, such as supermarket and restaurant chains.

In Canada, Loblaws and Olymel, either the nation’s largest or second-largest pork packer, have announced they will join the ban. Loblaws’ deadline is 2022; Olymel’s is 2023.

Swine disease still spreading

The new hog disease, Porcine Epidemic Diarrhea, continues to spread in the United States.

The count is now beyond 330 cases in 16 states, up from about 230 in 14 states a week ago.

This is despite pleas to all involved in the industry to take the highest degree of precautions to keep the disease from spreading.

It’s a killer of piglets, arriving from China where millions of pigs have died.

The disease has shown up in grower-finisher barns from Texas north to Indiana and Michigan, from Colorado in the west to North Carolina in the east.

Iowa has the most – 130 cases.

Canadians have been repeatedly urged to adopt strict biosecurity measures to keep the disease out of the country. That includes a warning that some truck-wash centres recycle water, so could spread - rather than clean away - contamination.

Chicken giants squeeze the market

Here we go again.

Chicken production is up by 2.8 per cent so far this year, imports are up by 4.2 per cent, but disappearance is down by 2.3 per cent.

And so inventories were six million kilograms greater this June 1 than a year ago They totalled 34.9 million kilograms in freezers.

The big companies complained about these unsold chickens costing them money to hold in storage, so     when the directors of Chicken Farmers of Canada met recently to ponder how much chicken to produce this fall, they were exceedingly cautious.

After taking into account the many factors that go into determining how much can be produced, Ontario ended up with a figure that is lower for this fall than last year.

How can this be?

We have two significant markets in Ontario that are short. CAMI International Poultry Inc. in Welland has less than a quarter of the chickens it needs to satisfy its Asian-market customers for Hong Kong dressed birds - i.e. head and feet on.

There is nobody processing kosher chicken in Ontario since Sargent Farms bought the plant supply quota held by Chai Kosher Poultry Ltd. of Toronto.

If the processors are so glutted with chicken, how come Sargent Farms is buying plant-supply quota? And was it the only large-volume processor shopping for plant-supply quota?

Supply management for chicken is in desperate need of a major overhaul.

But other than the Ontario Independent Poultry Processors association, there seems to be no leadership available to lead the industry beyond navel-gazing mediocrity, and from sailing over the cliff when tariff protections begin to significantly decline as a result of international trade negotiations.

We have a new Ontario agriculture minister who happens to be the premier. She can appoint the Ontario Farm Products Marketing Commission's directors who are responsible for supervising the marketing boards.

But it seems those in authority are, ummmm, CHICKEN!!!