Fair trade exposed as not so fair

A study by researchers at London University in England has found that fair trade for products such as coffee may not be fair to the very people consumers intend to help.

For example, they found that 30 per cent of the fair-trade workers in Ethiopia earned less than 60 per cent of the median wage while 95 per cent of the commercial companies’ workers earned as much as, or more more than, the median wage.

The best-paid workers were producing non-fair-trade commodities, the researchers report.

They spent four years and 1,000 days in Uganda and Ethiopia looking into the lives of workers; their data covers 1,700 respondents.

Their study has been published by the School of Oriental and African Studies at London University.

The report is another reminder that it's not enough to simply spend money on charities; you need to check out their performance.

Adaptation program renewed

The Canadian Agricultural Adaptation Program is alive, but with a much-reduced budget.

And it’s going to be first-come, first-served until the funding runs out for a program aimed at helping organizations implement good programs.

The funding will also be restricted to projects with national impact; previous programs encouraged provincial and regional initiatives.

The local administration by farm organizations, which has been consistently praised in Ontario for doing an outstanding job, has been cut out. Now the decisions will be made in the federal agriculture department in Ottawa.

In other words, the Tories will have their fingers meddling in the pie whereas before it was a coalition of farm organization leaders.

The program began with $240 million for five years, that was cut to $163 million for the next five years and now the budget is $50.3 million for the next five years.

In a news release, Agriculture Minister Gerry Ritz says the funding will go to those who:

-      “seize opportunities” — that is, to take advantage of a situation or circumstance to develop a new idea, product, niche, or market opportunity;

 -     “respond to new and/or emerging issues” that were “unknown or not a concern before;” or

-    “pathfind and/or pilot solutions” to new and ongoing issues, meaning to investigate new ways and/or different options of dealing with such issues, or to test ideas and/or approaches to apply in the sector.

Flipping steaks is better

Flipping steaks on the barbecue every two minutes improves food safety, according to a study published in the Journal of Food Protection.

The grill needs to be heating the meat to at least 60 degrees Centigrade.

The recommendation from many chefs that steaks on the barbecue ought to be turned only once proved risky because some E. coli 0157:H7 shoved inside the steak to simulate mechanical tenderizing survived, even after grilling at 60 degrees for about eight minutes. Grilling for 10 to 12 minutes also killed the harmful bacteria.

It also helps to close the barbecue lid for the final couple of minutes; that increases the temperature all around the steak.

About this time last year, some people in Edmonton fell victim to E. coli 0157:H7 that came from XL Foods Ltd. of Brooks, Alta.

Their steaks had been mechanically tenderized, meaning the harmful bacteria on the surface when it left XL Foods got pushed to the interior where it was less likely to be killed by heat during cooking.

Food safety communications guru Dr. Doug Powell says he has long been in the habit of flipping his barbecuing steak frequently, and now he knows it’s also a good food safety precaution.

                           

Black loses appeal

Glenn Black, president of Small Flockers of Canada, has lost his appeal to the Ontario Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs Appeal Tribunal.

The tribunal has, however, invited him to file another appeal on a narrower basis – only the issue of increasing the exemption from quota for chicken producers from the current 300 to 2,000 per year.

Black filed an appeal that challenged the entire supply management system, arguing that the tribunal ought to prescribe reforms to “get it back on track”.

The Chicken Farmers of Ontario marketing board argued at a tribunal hearing last week that the appeal ought to be a class-action lawsuit filed in the courts and that many of the issues Black raised are beyond the authority of the tribunal.

Black countered that the tribunal could be brave, lay out what it thinks supply management ought to look like and then let the courts and the public decide if appeals are filed in the courts or politicians take action in the legislature.

Black argued that about 18,000 small-flock chicken producers could do a better job of serving local markets, niche markets and people with lower incomes, all without taking any more than 10 per cent of the market that is now reserved for about 1,400 Ontario farmers who hold marketing board quota.

Some provinces have higher volumes they allow people without quota to produce – eg. up to 999 birds per year in Saskatchewan. 

Alberta has programs to offer quota leases for organic chicken production and for direct marketing ventures. It also allows communities to grow up to 6,000 chickens per year without quota, possibly a concession intended for Hutterite Colonies.

Black said he has not yet decided whether to file another appeal over the 300-birds-per-year limit.

Massive beef recall in Detroit

Wolverine Packing Co., of Detroit is recalling about 1.8 million pounds of ground beef because it might cause E. coli O157:H7 food poisoning.

So far 11 people have fallen ill, says the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

The department’s Food Safety and Inspection Service was notified of E. coli O157:H7 illnesses on May 12 and in conjunction with public health partners from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) determined that there is a link between the ground beef products from Wolverine Packing and 11people in four states.

Based on epidemiological and traceback investigations, 11 case-patients have been identified in four states.

The first case was identified April 22, 2014, and the rest between then and May 2.

The recall applies to ground beef marketed between March 31 and April 18.

The packaging is marked with “EST. 2574B”. Most of the ground beef was sold to restaurants in Michigan, Missouri,  Massachusetts and Ohio.

USDA recalls meat from cheater

The U.S. Department of Agriculture has issued a sweeping recall of products from a plant at Andover, New Jersey.

The owners of the plant, which has no federal meat inspection licence, were using inspection labels from another plant they own in Scranton, Pennsylvania.

The cheating is reminiscent of Richard (Butch) Claire who used federal meat inspection labels from a closed packing plant in Kitchener for products from his Aylmer Meats plant.

Some of the product from Aylmer Meats came from deadstock butchered when there were no provincial meat inspectors around.

As with Aylmer Meats, the U.S. Department of Agriculture said it doesn’t know the food-safety status of the meat from the Andover plant because it had no inspectors there.

It says no illnesses have been traced to the pork, poultry and duck fat sold from the plant.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture began investigating after it received an anonymous tip.

That, too, is similar to what unfolded at Aylmer Meats.

PED continues to spread in U.S.

There were another 191 farms infected with Porcine Epidemic Diarrhea virus in the United States last week, increasing the total to 8,421.

Meanwhile no new cases have been posted on the Ontario Pork marketing board website since April 30.

Ontario’s swine veterinarians and government officials have been saying that a combination of warmer weather and continued biosecurity ought to end the spread of the deadly virus here.

It kills almost all baby pigs and sets back older pigs for a week or 10 days.

There are estimates that about seven million U.S. piglets have died of the highly-contagious virus. 

There have been no official estimates of losses in Ontario, but the province’s second-largest hog-packing business is in receivership, partly because the virus reduced hog supplies and increased prices.