PigTRACE tag issues cleared

 

After 10 months of supply-chain issues, hog farmers are once again able to get normal-time delivery of ear tags that are necessary for the mandatory PigTRACE program.

Jeff Clark, who is director for the program, said there were no major disruptions to the flow of pigs throughout the shortage but plenty of dancing to avoid problems.

The main challenge was cull sows, most of them shipped to packing plants in the United States and therefore requiring the ear tags.

“We were definitely scrambling to find supply and through that period of time, prioritizing orders that were extremely urgent,” Clark said. Farmers faced fines if their sows lacked an ear tag.

The beef industry also had a supply challenge earlier this year.

In September, Allflex’s parent company, Merk Animal Health, opened a new manufacturing facility in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, to complement its plant at Dallas, Texas.

                           

Feds invest $2.4 million in meat inspection technology

The federal government is investing $2.4 million in a Waterloo company that is developing a smart imaging system that can measure meat tenderness, freshness, protein, water and fat content on a packing-plant processing line.

It can also detect imperfections and eliminate foreign materials, such as plastic and bone chips.

P&P Optima will use the federal funds to build demonstration units to show meat-packing companies.

The money comes from Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada’s AgriInnovate Program, which aims to accelerate the commercialization and adoption of technologies that increase competitiveness and sustainability.

Province proposes more housing on farmland

The provincial government has posted another set of proposals designed to increase housing and it includes making it easier to expand urban boundaries and to develop on farmland.

The proposal said the government wants a “streamlined and simplified policy direction that enables municipalities to expand their settlement area boundaries in a coordinated manner with infrastructure planning, in response to changing circumstances, local contexts and market demand to maintain and unlock a sufficient supply of land for housing and future growth.”

It said “the intended outcome of this review is to determine the best approach that would enable municipalities to accelerate the development of housing and increase housing supply (including rural housing), through a more streamlined, province-wide land use planning policy framework.”

That apparently means the province will be able to over-ride municipal and regional governments.

More specifically, if local planning clashes with the province’s new housing initiatives called “A Place to Grow”, the proposal said the housing policy will prevail.

Under a heading for agriculture, it said its plans are “policy direction that provides continued protection of prime agricultural areas and promotes Ontario’s Agricultural System, while creating increased flexibility to enable more residential development in rural areas that minimizes negative impacts to farmland and farm operations.”

And it said municipalities will be able to approve development on wetlands if there is either compensation or offsets.

Supply management gets lion’s share of budget

Supply management tops the list for agriculture subsidies revealed in Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland’s economic statement.

There is provision for the final instalments of $1.7 billion worth of compensation for the trade deal with the United States and Mexico.

While dairy producers already know how much they will receive next year under the fourth compensation payment for the Canada-European Union Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA) and the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP) the Government intends to offer them extra funding of up to $1.2 billion over six years under the Dairy Direct Payment Program to account for the impacts of CUSMA.

There is up to $300 million for the dairy processing industry to develop more value for solids-no-fat byproducts.

For the Canadian poultry and egg producers there is an additional $112 million under the Poultry and Egg On-Farm Investment Program. Producers will receive payments based on their quota holdings to support improvements to their farm businesses. 

This funding will bring the total compensation for this sector to $803 million.

The wine industry will get $83 million per fiscal year in the next two fiscal years.

But we are desperately short of federal funds for medicare.

Politicians exempt grain drying from carbon tax

Members of the House of Commons Agriculture Committee have approved a bill that will exempt grain drying from the federal carbon tax.

It now goes to the full House of Commons for third reading and, if approved there, to the Senate.

“We were pleased with the support Bill C-234 received. . .,” said chairman Brendan Byrne of Grain Farmers of Ontario. 

“It is clear that these Members of Parliament understand the lack of current alternatives for grain drying and the need to provide an exemption until viable technological solutions are developed. Now we need the bill to pass the House and for Honourable Senators to pass the Bill into law during the life of this Parliament.”

 

He is now calling on the Senate to pass the bill expeditiously, mindful that a previous Private Members Bill on the same topic passed the House but died on the Order Paper with the dissolution of the previous Parliament for the 2021 general election.

Wage-fixing is the new meat-industry lawsuit

Eleven of the largest meat packers in the United States have been accused of wage-fixing in a new lawsuit filed in Colorado.

Heinz-Kraft, one of the largest food-processing companies, is also accused in the lawsuit which is seeking class-action status.

The suit accuses affiliates the companies of conspiring to drive down wages paid to workers at beef and pork plants across the country by allegedly imposing “no-poach” agreements, exchanging data about compensation among workers through “detailed surveys” and imposing what were described as “highly regimented” wage schedules.

The accusers say the collusion began Jan. 1, 2014, and continued through the present.

The 11 main defendants and their affiliates include American Foods Group, Cargill Inc., Hormel Foods Corp., JBS, National Beef, Perdue Farms, Seaboard Corp., Smithfield, Triumph Foods, Tyson Foods Inc., data aggregators Agri Beef, Agri-Stats Inc. and Weber, Meng, Sahl and Co.

The list also includes Kraft Heinz — which is accused of providing a detailed wage survey in 2019 — Clemens Food Group, accused of setting “artificially depressed” wages based on compensation, and Indiana Packers, which allegedly benefited from Agri-Stats data.

Beef slaughter heading down

 

The United States is heading into the biggest decline in beef slaughter since 1979 next year, predicts the United States Department of Agriculture.

It said drought is the reason, prompting farmers to send heifers to feedlots this year and cows to slaughter.

In the latest World Agricultural Supply and Demand Estimates report, USDA forecast 2023 U.S. beef production of 26.343 billion pounds, down by 7.3 per cent from 2022 levels. 

The agency cut the estimate by 90 million pounds this month from it prediction last month.