Manitoba egg plant cleared to re-open

The Canadian Food Inspection Agency has cleared Clouston Farms of St. Andrews, Manitoba, to resume egg-industry operations.

The agency suspended Clouston’s licence in December for failure to comply with orders to improve sanitation and food safety.

Judging from the release of CFIA documents via Access to Information, it has been rare for the CFIA to suspend the licence of an egg-grading or egg-processing facility, even after repeated identification of deficiencies.

Commission finally posts milk reg change

The Ontario Farm Products Marketing Commission waited until this week to post a new milk act regulation on its website that paves the way for another pricing class for milk.

The Dairy Farmers of Ontario marketing board has adopted a strategy of pricing milk low enough to take back markets that are being served by imported milk protein isolates.

Its approach has been heavily criticized by the chairman of the national milk marketing agency, Dairy Farmers of Canada, and by members of the Quebec milk marketing board and Quebec’s largest general-membership farm organization.

Their strategy is to pressure the federal government to restrict imports and to maintain high prices for a slightly smaller market share.

It’s not clear why the commission took so long to post the regulation which it approved on March and which came into effect April 1.

The regulation can be read online at www.ontario.ca/laws/regulation/900753?search=MILK+ACT .

Quaker hit with lawsuits

Companies are learning that it’s not all high prices and profits when they claim their products are more virtuous.

Quaker Oats is the most recent to feel the string of angry consumers who have filed lawsuits in California and New York.

They say PepsiCo Inc., which owns Quaker Oats, misled them with advertisements declaring their product “100 per cent natural”.

But the consumers say glyphosate is sprayed on oat fields, first to get rid of weeds before planting, then as a dessicant to prepare the crop for harvest.

That, they claim, probably means there are glyphosate residues in Quaker Oats products and it’s not listed as an ingredient.

Chipotle restaurant chain is also taking it on the chin for food poisonings, exposing the company as less caring than its high-profile claims such as GMO free and high standards of welfare for meat and poultry products.

“Quaker knows that consumers seek out and wish to purchase whole, natural foods that do not contain chemicals, and that consumers will pay more for foods that they believe to be natural,” lawyers for the New York consumers wrote in a complaint. 

“By deceiving consumers about the nature, quality, and/or ingredients of its Quaker Oats, Quaker is able to sell a greater volume of Quaker Oats, to charge higher prices for Quaker Oats, and to take away market share from competing products.”

The consumers, whose suits in federal courts in New York and California seek class-action status, want refunds and more money for “damages”.

The company did not immediately respond to an e-mailed request for comment, reports Bloomberg News service.

                         

Ethanol maker outed by CBC

GreenField Specialty Alcohols Ltd. is the biggest corporate donor to the Ontario Liberals and recipient of $160 million in government support, says the CBC.

Greenfield pioneered ethanol production in Ontario.

In addition to government grants, the company benefits from the law that requires at least five per cent ethanol in gasoline.

Greenfield started as a relatively small business distilling special alcohols at a plant at Tiverton, then built a large plant at Chatham and added a third at Johnstown in

Eastern Ontario along the St. Lawrence Seaway.

Farm organizations lobbied hard for the ethanol industry. Current Ontario Federation of Agriculture president Don McCabe was one of the leading lobbyists via the Canadian Renewable Fuels Association.

Premier Kathleen Wynne now says she wants to ban all corporate and union funding of political parties.

Vandals release 500 mink

Vandals cut holes in walls, enabling about 500 mink to escape from a fur farm in Brant County.

The name of the farm and the owner have not been released, but the owner asked Nancy Daigneault, vice-president of the International Fur Federation to speak for him.

She said the situation is similar to vandalism a year ago when several mink farms in the St. Marys area were hit by animal-rights activists.

Both this year and last, the vandals have hit when new litters are nursing and they will not likely survive.

Researcher finds prions in plants

Prions may be lurking in plants.

Prions are held responsible for Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy (BSE, or mad cow’s disease) and deadly Kreutsfeldt-Jacob disease in humans.

A research team led by Susan Lindquist, a biologist at the Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research in Cambridge, Massachusetts, say they found a section of protein in thale cress (Arabidopsis) that behaves like a prion when it is inserted into yeast.

More research is required to determine whether they are like prions that attack the brains of mammals.

In plants, the protein is called Luminidependens (LD), and it is normally involved in responding to daylight and controlling flowering time. 

When a part of the LD gene is inserted into yeast, it produces a protein that does not fold up normally, and which spreads this misfolded state to proteins around it in a domino effect that causes aggregates or clumps. 

Later generations of yeast cells inherit the effect: their versions of the protein also misfold.

This does not mean that plants definitely have prion-like proteins, says Lindquist; but she thinks that it is likely. 

“I’d be surprised if they weren’t there,” she says. 

To prove it, researchers would need to grind up a plant and see whether they could find a protein such as LD in several different folded states, as well as show that any potential prion caused a misfolding cascade when added to a test-tube of protein. 

Lindquist adds that because she’s not a plant scientist — her focus is on using yeast to investigate prions — she hasn’t tried these experiments. 

The study appeared Apr. 25 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

New mite found in Lancaster, Pa.

A new pest that destroys leeks, onions, garlic, chives, shallots and green onions has spotted in Lancaster, Pa., says the state department of agriculture.

A tiny allium leafminer fly was discovered for the first time on a farm in Lancaster County in December and has since been identified in four other counties, including Chester, Dauphin, Delaware and Lehigh, reports Olena Goncharova of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.

It’s the first time in has been identified in the Western hemisphere.

“For our farmers an infection of this pest could mean a loss in production of allium crops. And for our consumers, this could result in a lack of availability of these crops for consumption,” Agriculture Secretary Russell Redding said.

The allium leafminer, or Phytomyza gymnostoma, was first detected in 1850 and in 2003 was spotted in the United Kingdom. 

It has affected farms in Poland and Germany, and has been reported in Asia, Turkey, parts of Russia and Turkmenistan. 

Adult leafminers are about three millimeters long and look like gray or black flies with a distinctive yellow or orange patch on the top and front. 

They show up at the end of winter and lay eggs at he base of plant stems from March to May. 

The eggs are white, about 0.5 millimeters in length and slightly curved. Infected plants usually have wavy, curled and distorted leaves with a row of white dots.

Leafminers are most likely transported with commercial cargo or in passenger baggage. They frequently escape detection at ports of entry.

There is a lot of Mennonite traffic between farms in Lancaster County and Ontario.

Scientists are still working to understand the nature of this species. Shelby Fleischer, a Penn State professor of entomology, says it’s too early to predict the damage it may cause and how fast this pest might spread across the country, but it could be a “significant problem.” 

More studies need to be done, Mr. Fleischer said.

Previous research show that the pest can be more damaging in organic, non-commercial farms or homeowner gardens. Then are no threat to human health.

A delay in planting, which normally begins in March for fall for allium crops such as leeks, can be used to minimize crop exposure. 

Covering onion, chive and garlic plants before the emergence of adults, and keeping plants covered could keep leafminers out. European growers also used pesticides.

Farmers and gardeners can submit photos of damaged crops to Badbug@pa.gov to help with identification and obtain advice.