Canada objects to U,S. labels

 

Canadians have reacted swiftly and strongly to another move by the United States to label meats and poultry products as U.S. products.

The voluntary system was announced Monday by U.S. Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack speaking at the annual meeting of the National Farmers Union.

Federal Agriculture Minister Lawrence MacAulay and Trade Minister Mary NG said the “meat and livestock sectors in Canada and the United States work closely together” and that Canada intends to raise the issue during the agriculture ministers trilateral meeting with United States and Mexico scheduled to take place in Colorado later this month.

The Canadian Cattle Association called the rule “the most onerous standard in the world.”

“It is crucial to address any issues that threaten or diminish cattle and beef trade between Canada and the U.S.,” CCA president Nathan Phinney said in the statement.

“We are very concerned that the rule will lead to discrimination against live cattle imports and undermine the beneficial integration of the North American supply chain.”

The Canadian pork industry has not yet issued a statement, but is likely to echo the CCA.

Grays donate $3.5 million to research

 

Bill and Linda Gray are donating $3.5 million to the University of Guelph to fund poultry and egg research.

They want research to focus on Improving innovation and sustainability in the Canadian poultry and egg industry.

The gift will create the Bill and Lynne Gray Chair in Advanced Poultry Technology Management in the Department of Animal Biosciences within the Ontario Agricultural College.

“We are incredibly grateful to Bill and Lynne Gray’s commitment to fund this chair, which will help OAC advance its mission of improving the Canadian and global food system,” said OAC acting dean Dr. John Cranfield. 

“This gift will help elevate our strength in poultry production research and teaching.” 

The chair will also work closely with faculty in the School of Engineering on environmental control issues such as lighting, ventilation, sanitation and biosecurity, using new and emerging technologies to help control the spread of avian diseases.

The donation comes via the William and Lynne Gray Foundation and L.H. Gray and Son Limited.

                          

Who knew I would write something nice about Bill Gary?

New U.S. COOL regs announced

 United States Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack said new regulations on country of origin labelling for meats and poultry products are now in effect.

He made the announcement in a speech to the annual conference of the National Farmers Union.

A key part of the new regulation says ‘‘Product of USA’’ and ‘‘Made in the USA’’ may be displayed on labels of (U.S. Food Safety and Inspection Service)-regulated products only if the product is derived from animals born, raised, slaughtered, and processed in the United States. 

FSIS is also proposing that claims other than the two authorized claims ‘‘Product of USA’’ and ‘‘Made in the USA’’ may be displayed on labels to indicate the U.S.- origin component of a product’s preparation and processing. 

All U.S.-origin label claims that are not authorized claims are known as ‘‘qualified claims.’’ 

Qualified claims would need to include a description on the package of how the product compares to the regulatory criteria for the two authorized claims, ‘‘Product of USA’’ and ‘‘Made in the USA,’’ including all preparation and processing steps that occurred in the United States upon which the claim is made. 

For example, ‘‘Sliced and packaged in the United States using imported pork’’ could be a U.S.-origin qualified claim. 

FSIS is proposing that companies using a voluntary claim of U.S. origin on labels of FSIS-regulated products must, as with the use of all origin claims, maintain documentation to demonstrate that the product complies with criteria of the proposed regulatory requirements,” that part of the lengthy document says.

Canada and Mexico have defeated two previous attempts to introduce country-of-origin labeling for meats.

When those previous regulations were in place, meat packers who wanted to use meat from animals born, raised or slaughtered outside of the U.S. had to be kept separate in the food chain which resulted in discounted prices for imports.

Canada and Mexico successfully argued that this created a trade barrier that violated the trade agreement among the three countries.

PDCoV hits Huron County farm

 

Swine Health Ontario belatedly reports an outbreak of Porcine Deltacaronavirus in a finisher barn in Huron County.

Its website puts the date of the outbreak at Feb. 23, two days after an outbreak of the disease in a nursery in Oxford County and 10 days after two outbreaks in Haldimand County.

Four rabid bats in Ontario

 

The Canadian Food Inspection Agency reports four positive results of testing bats in Ontario for rabies during February.

It tested 104 samples.

There were no positives from testing 71 Ontario samples in January.

Natio-wide there have been five rabies cases for far this year. The one was in New Brunswick and was also a rabid bat.

The politics of raw milk flips parties

Raw milk, once the darling of the most liberal Democrats, is now being championed by Republicans in the United States.

In a lengthy article on edairynews, author Marc Novicoff of Politico outlines what’s happening as state legislatures vote to over-turn laws that mandate pasteurization for milk.

“Long a fringe health food for new-age hippies and fad-chasing liberal foodies, raw milk has won over the hearts and minds of GOP (Republican) legislators and regulators in the last few years,” he wrote.

A recent vote in the Iowa legislature broke almost perfectly along party lines with nearly all Republicans in favor and only a handful of Democrats defecting to their side, Novicoff wrote.

And it’s not just in Iowa. Montana, North Dakota, Alaska, Georgia and Wyoming all have passed laws (or changed regulations) since 2020 legalizing the sale of raw milk on farms or in stores.

In the words of Iowa Republican Senator Jason Schultz who for years failed in attempts to pass the law, “cycle after cycle, we find new officeholders are just becoming more freedom-oriented and less trusting of government at all levels.”

What changed?

First, liberal elites gave up on it. Iowa Democrats overwhelmingly voted against the raw milk bill; it no longer gets sympathetic coverage in the New York Times, Washington Post, the New Yorker, Grist or The Nation. 

Whole Foods no longer sells it (although Erewhon now does), and perhaps fittingly, Whole Foods is now owned by Amazon, the trillion-dollar retailer whose employees donated overwhelmingly to Joe Biden over Donald Trump. 

Covid is sure to have played a role here, the era where many liberals internalized that trusting the experts distinguished them from Trump and those they considered anti-science (or worse, anti-vax). One study found that whether a school planned to reopen in the fall of 2020 was much more related to its county’s support for Trump in 2016 than it was to local Covid numbers, Novicoff wrote.

At the same time, conservatives discovered that raw milk fit neatly inside a worldview that was increasingly skeptical of credentialed expertise. Though in some ways, it had always been a natural fit. 

As conservative writer Rod Dreher put it in a 2002 essay called “Crunchy Cons” about his love for the organic despite its liberal tinge (and the predictable sneering of his Republican colleagues), conservatism is in part defined by the belief that “generally speaking, Small and Local and Particular and Old are better.” Much more recently, Carmel Richardson wrote for The American Conservative after Iowa’s raw milk law went into effect that the law evoked “the ghost” of a “rugged ethos” present in American culture and history.

As Suzy Weiss explained for The Free Press last January, drinking raw milk is often a giant middle-finger to the experts — the same ones who say Joe Biden isn’t cognitively impaired, that Donald Trump is the worst president in the history of America, and that drinking raw milk is “like playing Russian roulette with your health,” as the director of the FDA Division of Dairy and Egg Safety once said. 

To be clear, the CDC’s own study says raw milk is estimated to have caused three deaths from 1998-2018 while oysters cause 100 deaths every year. Weiss writes “for new consumers, raw milk is a symbol. … To drink (and especially to produce) raw milk is a way of breaking with convention and raging against the machine — the United States Department of Agriculture, the Centers for Disease Control, the FDA, doctors, PhDs, state regulators, and Big Dairy.”

                           

Wheat research cluster gets $20 million

 

The Canadian National Wheat Cluster is receiving more than $20 million over five years for research.

The Wheat Cluster will fund research projects that advance wheat genetics, agronomy and sustainability for the benefit of Canadian farmers.It will be administered by the Canadian Wheat Research Cluster.

“Wheat is a vital crop in the rotations of grain farmers across the country,” said Jake Leguee, CWRC chair, who farms near Fillmore, Saskatchewan.

“The investment in research through the Wheat Cluster will keep wheat profitable and sustainable for Canadian farmers, increasing quality and yields while finding new solutions for environmental stressors like drought and diseases like Fusarium head blight. 

“Farmers have been practicing minimum tillage and nutrient stewardship for decades, and the activities funded under this will enhance those practices, allowing farmers to contribute further to the Government of Canada’s climate targets,” he said.

Winnipeg North MP Kevin Lamoureux announced the new Wheat Cluster on behalf of federal Agriculture Minister Lawrence MacAulay,.

More than $11.2 million will come from Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada and more than $9.3 million will come from producer and private organizations from across Canada and mainly by Prairie grain and research organizations.