He did so in November during a three-country simulation of a North American foot and mouth disease outbreak. The exercise simulated the circumstances that would arise during a disease outbreak that ostensibly occurred when a Texas pig farmer fed discarded food retrieved from a foreign vessel tied up in port. All the steps in the outbreak were quite plausible, given the large number of livestock that move in all directions at this time of year, says Clark.

In the exercise, the disease spread from shipped pigs to a sales yard where cattle sold into both the United States and Mexico were traded. From Mexico, the disease spread on rodeo stock to Alberta and to a purebred cattle farm near Seaforth that also housed a commercial sow operation.

Swine are a particularly virulent spreader of the disease. A pig will spread about 3,000 times as much of the infective virus as a cow. The virus has been documented to travel at least as far as 10 kilometers in the wind.

The CFIA learned that it needs many more resources to deal with a disease outbreak, running out of manpower on the third day. Procedures will likely be rethought, says Clark. In the case of an actual disease outbreak, the CFIA would pull people out of its regular offices, and also hire people from the pork and beef industries, Ontario Veterinary College, the Ontario Agricultural College, and even off the street, with some training, to do some of the manual jobs required. "We need to take fairly fast, vigorous and aggressive action early," Clark said.

The foot and mouth disease outbreak on the Canadian Prairies in 1952, believed to be caused by an immigrant bringing in a sausage from Germany and feeding it to pigs, was no exercise and it was costly. An outbreak would be much worse now, says Clark. Farms aren't nearly as self-sufficient. With much more traffic in and out of today's specialized farming units, there is more opportunity for the disease to spread. Livestock is no longer necessarily consumed in the area where it was produced, and superhighways can carry livestock a long way in a day. Furthermore, Canada is far more dependent on exports, with more than half of Canadian beef exported today.

The results of such an outbreak on trade would be disastrous. Both Japan and Korea had foot and mouth outbreaks in 2000. Taiwan had a devastating outbreak in 1997, and more restricted outbreaks every year since, in spite of vaccination programs. Clark says it will be at least 2007 before another country will agree to purchase a pound of pork from Taiwan.

Foot and mouth was chosen for the simulation because it is the most virulent disease likely to strike in North America, Clark says. The same control protocols could be used to prevent the spread of other diseases such as pseudorabies.

Reviled hamburger company now praised
Back in the mid-1990s, Jack in the Box restaurants were notorious in the United States because of the child deaths from E. coli 0157:H7, caught from undercooked hamburgers eaten at the chain's restaurants in the Northwest.

In 2000, Jack in the Box came to prominence again, for a more positive reason. The restaurant chain received California's inaugural "outstanding leadership in food safety" award from the Food and Drug Branch of the California Department of Health Services. Jack in the Box helped the state adopt uniform food safety standards put forward by the federal Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and also helped to draft a 1997 law requiring restaurants to cook eggs and meat at specific temperatures to ensure food safety.

The FDA has lauded the restaurant chain as a model for the industry. In 1997 the agency brought in a Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Points (HACCP) program that had been considered too complex for fast food restaurants to use. The restaurant chain is working to help other states where it operates to adopt safety standards that are consistent with the new FDA Food Code.

E. coli 0157:H7 is the same bacterium which has been blamed in the deaths of Walkerton residents who drank contaminated water. In both the Walkerton and the Jack in the Box outbreaks, contamination caused some children to die and left others with non- functioning kidneys.

Endangered Species, American Style
Thinking about how to preserve Canadian wildlife, Ottawa? Here's an example of some of the pitfalls.

In November, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service announced that it will not add another 25 species to its endangered list until next fall. The reason? The service has been swamped by costly lawsuits from environmental groups demanding "critical habitat" designation for some of the 1,225 species already listed as threatened or endangered. Those designations would extend federal regulations to areas that are needed for the recovery of a species, even if it does not already live there.

As might be imagined, wildlife preservations are not impressed by what they see as "serious politics" being played by the federal service.

But the Wildlife Service says it's a matter of money, not politics. Its fiscal year end is Sept. 30. No further expansions will be offered until then. Exceptions will be made for species that are in imminent danger of extinction.

Since the early 1970s, U.S. federal law prevents landowners from developing properties that are home to endangered wildlife, but no compensation was offered. Canada was considering a law that would compensate property owners for helping to protect species that are deemed to belong to all Canadians. The bill was abandoned when the federal election was called.

"Genetically modified" turkeys targeted
McDonalds and Burger King both caved in. Now the pressure is on other food companies in the United Kingdom to switch to foods free of genetic modifications. Food producer Bernard Matthews is under the gun.

Greenpeace is trying to force the company to use only GM-free foods in producing livestock. Turkeys were a particular target and Greenpeace picketed stores in late fall, encouraging shoppers to send what it describes as an envelope of "genetically modified free" animal feed from a pile provided.

Greenpeace says a poll conducted for them in September found that 67 per cent of respondents were opposed to farm animals being fed genetically modified soybeans. But Bernard Matthews claims it can't get feed that is guaranteed GM-free. Greenpeace says that isn't so and has posted on its website a list of turkey brands it claims are GM-feed free as well as brands that aren't.

The site is well organized, with direct links to send emails to top grocery chain executives so that irate consumers can complain about GM products in their foods.

Of course people who disagree with the Greenpeace stand can also use those links to urge grocers to stay the course.

The website address is: http://www.greenpeace.org.uk/Products/GM/active.htm Here's an opportunity to make your views known, either way. As the noted Canadian humourist Stephen Leacock said, "vote early and vote often."

Algae busy scrubbing manure
Here's a novel use for liquid dairy cow manure. Feed it to algae that can then be used as a high protein feed for livestock fish, or as fertilizer. The algae, by the way, prevent loss of both phosphorus and nitrogen, which tend to escape into waterways and the air, respectively.

Testing of the algae scrubber is underway at a federal agriculture research station in Maryland, where microbiologists have installed an algae scrubber system to treat the manure from a 300-cow barn. The algae grow in four raceways, each 50 meters long and a metre wide. The diluted liquid manure is dumped at the high end of the raceway and it travels down the concrete slope in waves.

Both one and two degree slopes are being tested to determine if the rate of flow has an effect on the quantity of the algae growth. The algae grow on mesh screens lining the raceways. Every week the screens are rolled up and the algae are scraped off mechanically.

In small-scale indoor tests, the algae removed almost all of the ammonia nitrogen and a high percentage of the phosphorous (ED: which is correct sp? See above) from the liquid manure. The large-scale tests will determine if the algae can be grown all year round.

The original algae scrubber was invented as a way to clean fish waste off of a living coral display at the Smithsonian Institute's marine display in Washington, DC. BF

Keeping cool in the summer sun

In one of its Thanksgiving weekend editions, The Toronto Star published some provocative remarks from John Core, the outgoing chairman of Dairy Farmers of Ontario. Core says he wasn't using the Star either to sing his personal swan song or to predict the demise of the dairy industry in general. However, he did say his future in the industry depended heavily on family decisions that may be made before spring. Among his comments: "Once you've studied economics, you'll never go into farming." And, "This old farm just isn't worth keeping going."

Core admits saying some of these things "in a certain way, but they were taken out of context." Regarding the economics quote, Core says that at one point he and his brother Tom were discussing with the Star reporter the economics of dairy farming and the substantial investment that must be made to start from scratch in the business today -- about $1.5 million. "Economically, it wouldn't make sense to do it," Core remembers himself saying, referring to the challenges of starting into the business without taking it over from a family member.

Regarding the quote about the worn-out farm, Core partners his brothers Tom and Ron in the prime farm belt of Lambton County, east of Sarnia. They milk 66 cows in barn that was state of the art in 1980, with about 70 tie stalls, a two-inch pipeline system and a Total Mixed Rations feeder. Then, the Cores were ahead of their time, but the barn is now badly dated and a decision about the farm's future lies ahead after John Core ends his 11-year tenure as the full-time chairman of Dairy Farmers of Ontario in January.

As for the Star story, "I just laugh about it," Core told Better Farming. "If that is the story you want to make about it, that's the story."

It's The Environment, Stupid

A new wave of environmental concerns is on its way to the top of the public agenda in North America and may require farm organizations to take a new path, warns a prominent public polling company.

First, public sympathies for farm causes and their woes are waning, warns pollster Chris Coulter of Toronto-based Environics International Ltd. Coulter told a water treatment industry conference in Toronto recently that consumers are beginning to disrespect farmers. "They think the family farm is done," Coulter said. Farm leaders' warnings that the family farm is in danger because of corporate inroads appear to have been taken seriously by consumers. Now they think farms are corporations and they have little sympathy for them.

Coulter stressed that the opinions he was expressing were the result of focus groups on biotechnology, "not on empirical data" from carefully crafted questions asked in telephone polls.

Still, if the focus groups are right and agriculture is viewed as being entirely dominated by corporations, then farmers may be in trouble because of the public's perception. Polls show that 80 per cent of Canadians don't trust what corporations say about the environment, Coulter said.

Another alarming trend: fewer Canadians trust governments to give them information and more of them trust so called non-governmental organizations, such as Greenpeace and the Sierra Club, to provide leadership. At least part of that is because those organizations appear to know what they are talking about.

Corporations and governments have to improve their performance, Coulter said. "The yardstick keeps going up."

Well, beans are from Ontario

Ernie Hardeman has found that maple syrup can taste sour, especially if it comes from Quebec. Ontario's agriculture minister was left searching for words at a press conference at the Outdoor Farm Show near Woodstock this fall. The Ontario agriculture ministry has earmarked $1.4 million in Rural Job Strategy money for the H. J. Heinz plant in Leamington to create 40 jobs. The goal is to increase flagging white bean consumption across Canada and the United States with a multi-media advertising campaign.

Hardeman grew uncomfortable when he saw that one of the newly labeled cans touted "made with Quebec maple syrup." "We have some good maple syrup right here in Ontario and in Oxford County," he asserted. Darn right we do. The Ontario agriculture ministry's website says that Ontario's five-year average production is 1,164,000 litres of syrup, worth about $15 million. Quebec's production averaged nearly 15 million litres annually during the same time.

Another partner in the campaign, Blenheim-based W.G.Thompson, is offering unique three-year contracts to white bean growers to boost Ontario's see-sawing acreage.

Convenience has a price

There was a time when it was almost impossible to sell a beef pot roast. Who needs something that has to be cooked for three hours to make it chewable? Enter some of the new microwaveable products available now in the grocery store, sitting right beside the old fashioned string-wrapped piece of muscle. But look at the price. The old pot roast costs about $5.50 a kilo, while the ready-in-10 minutes, fancy-packaged job would be a whopping $17 if it were sold in the same-sized chunk, which it is not.

Better Farming's Shorttakes editor took the liberty of taste-testing this new product and did not bother to share it with others, it was that good. These are the new branded products that are available in the supermarket shelves today, says beef industry marketing consultant Paul MacInnes.

Fasting an E. coli 0157:H7 alternative?

The controversial concept that changing the diet of beef cattle before slaughter can reduce the number of deadly E. coli O157:H7 bacteria just won't go away. First postulated several years ago by a Cornell University researcher, it was quickly deemed "junk science" by others in the scientific community and it looked like the concept had been put to rest.

However, the panned Cornell study showed up again last spring in a report by the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations. The FAO cited the Cornell study as proof that feedlot operators are poisoning people by feeding grain to cattle instead of a pure roughage diet. Sort of makes the credibility of the FAO suspect.

Meanwhile, the E. coli study issue is coming up again. Researchers from the University of Idaho and Washington State University report that they have done further studies. They tested cattle that were forced to fast for 24 hours, and then refed them and compared their gut contents to those of continuously fed cattle. The scientists found that the fasting cattle had a lower rate of E. coli in their gastro-intestinal tracts. However, the scientists advise that this procedure shouldn't be adopted until it is tested further.

Don't look for this technique, even if it is successful, to solve contamination problems on meat. It still doesn't deal with the issue of deadly E. coli being carried on the hides of animals and transmitted during processing at beef plants. BF

Keeping cool in the summer sun

Why did the radio personality cross the road? Because "he got tired of all the whining about cutbacks at the CBC," quips well-known former CBC Ottawa reporter Denis Grignon.

When Better Farming followed up on a letter to the editor from Grignon recently, we found he was more like someone who hasn't really crossed the road from radio to farming. You might say he's taking a different road. Before last year's CBC cutbacks, Denis and wife Nancy teamed up with Nancy's father Philip Payne on the family farm. Payne has a long-established cow-calf , swine and small grains operation on 300 acres near Lindsay.

The couple help with haying and are fully responsible for the 10-sow farrow-to-finish unit which is based on farm-grown barley which is ground and mixed on-farm. They've already managed to purchase the tiny swine unit on installments and plan to take over crop production in the next few years, when Phillip is ready to retire. They aim to generate 50 to 60 per cent of their total income from the farm.

Grignon, who grew up in Cornwall, still does some freelance radio reporting. He readily refers to himself as "a city slicker, with lots to learn about farming." So what's his picture doing in a magazine for professional farmers? Grignon says the hours he spends each morning dressed in rubber boots and coveralls, scraping hog manure into the barn cleaner, provide fertile material for another part time venture - his career as a standup comic. Although he has performed in some of the country's largest comedy clubs, he finds his most appreciative audiences are farmers. A number of farm groups have hired him to entertain at meetings and special events. He tries to work two or three performances a month in between his part-time radio reporting assignments, farrowing sows and shipping hogs.

Pigs equal food, get it?

Last spring Larry and Glenn Tulpin, owners of St. Williams-based Norfolk Packers, applied to build a 1,000-head-a-day pork slaughter plant in Tillsonburg's municipally owned and serviced industrial park. The federally inspected plant wasn't going to make Maple Leaf or Quality Packers sweat, but it would have been a home for a further 260,000 pigs a year. Tillsonburg, with its solid agricultural base, seemed like a natural. Not only was it seeking industry, but the necessary services were available. The sewage treatment plant was running at less than half capacity. The municipal bylaw allowing the town to sell the property to the nascent Oxford Packers was passed in early August.

But that was not the end of it. A furious anti-pig campaign followed. A petition decrying the development was circulated throughout a new retirement community a mile and a half away. Intense pressure on the local politicians forced several to change their minds. A bylaw rescinding the first one was passed in late August following a raucous public meeting where the Tulpins said they were shouted down when they tried to answer questions.

The Tulpins admit that perhaps they could have done better, but add that they aren't public relations experts. "We're butchers," says the down-to-earth Larry. At press time, no plan to press the issue further had been made.

Hector Verhoeve, Mayor of the Corporation of the Township of Norfolk, who also runs a funeral home in Tillsonburg, was saddened. The Tulpins are good people, he said, who "run a clean operation." Norfolk wasn't able to accommodate their proposed federal plant because sewage capacity was lacking. To build a plant in Norfolk would have cost the Tulpins an extra million dollars.

Shortly after they ran the Tulpins off, the townsfolk celebrated with a fundraising pork barbecue put on the local Shriners club. The Tulpins wonder how many pork plant protestors showed up.

West Perth battle continues

It's off to Divisional Court in mid-November for beef feedlot operator Ben Gardiner, after the Ontario Municipal Board (OMB) refused to overturn a West Perth council decision to restrict the numbers of livestock that can be located on any one farm in the municipality. The farmer's lawyer cites four errors in law in the decision.

Gardiner has no current plans to expand his 1,200 head feedlot east of Exeter, but wants to be able to do so in the future to accommodate a family member. He was fighting a 1998 bylaw which limits a producer to 600 animal units on one farm, to owning no less than 30 per cent of the land where he spreads manure, and to hauling manure no further than eight kilometres for spreading. Gardiner says expanding on another farm would cost twice as much per animal unit, and would open up security concerns. He says his current operation is already less than one animal unit per acre and even with an expansion would total no more than 1.5.

If a municipality can establish a limit on units of livestock per farm, that limit can be moved downwards, notes Keith Robbins, Ontario Pork's director of communications. The pork industry expects that the issue will be dealt with provincially under enabling legislation from the Ontario agriculture ministry this fall.

The reasons for the bylaw's existence are blurry. While the OMB ruled that the West Perth bylaws were in place "to protect public health and safety," its decision cited testimony from John Van Bakel, West Perth's mayor, that the municipality's bylaw aimed to retain the family farm as a viable unit which in turn would provide students to keep the local rural schools from closing.

Gardiner was able to overturn the hauling distance rule. The OMB said safety of trucks falls under the Highway Safety Act, not the Planning Act.

Tyson fouls its own nest

Tyson Food Inc. is in poop in a big way for its handling of chicken waste on the Delmarva Peninsula, a major market for Ontario corn. And it's not the first time.

Tyson, headquartered in Springdale, Ark., is one of the largest poultry producing companies in the United States. Inspections of its farms this summer revealed that manure storage sheds in Maryland, built to hold waste to prevent it from running into waterways were largely unused. Instead feathers, bones and other remains were stockpiled in watery sludge pits.

The Washington Post says the sheds were built as part of a $6 million settlement of a federal pollution lawsuit under the Clean Water Act. The sheds cost as much as US$250,000 on each of six farms.

A Post reporter saw the pits first, reported it to state officials, who then called in the Environmental Protection Agency. The Post says Tyson officials were unable to explain why both manure and dead birds, both necessary for composting, were present but in the wrong place. Tyson promised immediately to clean up the site, a potential source of ground water contamination.

Critics contend that this is typical of giant American contract pork and poultry operations. They do the bare minimum necessary to meet the letter of the law, while often circumventing its spirit.

Not Giuliani's pet

PETA -- People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals -- isn't New City Mayor Rudy Giuliani's pet. He's considering suing the animal rights organization for defamation in its campaign to run down milk. PETA decided to spoof the dairy industry's advertising campaign with its "Got Milk?" celebrity program, and ran billboard-sized ads of the Big Apple's mayor sporting a heavy milk moustache and the kicker "Got Prostate Cancer?"

Giuliani cited his illness last spring as a reason to quit running as a Republican candidate against First Lady Hillary Clinton for a New York State senate seat. PETA says studies have linked consumption of dairy products to prostate cancer. Guiliani was quoted as saying that the campaign was "over the top." "The ad is tasteless...My illness is a very public matter, which you know I am fine with. But I don't like people exploiting it either."

The American Association for Cancer Research says the link between prostate cancer and dairy consumption is weak, citing the same 11-year study that PETA says proves the connection. More of a factor than dairy consumption, the cancer researchers say, is consumption of fat, which is often connected to a lack of fruit and vegetables in the diet.

Cool man, cool!

Black may be in the in colour for night club goers these days, but ceramic white is definitely where its at when it comes to keeping farm building temperatures comfortable.

That's the selling point behind the ceramic coating produced by Coem-Tek Coatings Inc. of St. Clement's, which is getting a trial run on farm buildings in western Ontario. The coating is said to reduce the radiant head absorbed from the sun's rays by 95 per cent.

An official test is taking place on a pig barn at the Arkell swine testing station. Inside and outside temperatures are being monitored and compared. Tom Parker, Arkell's lead hand ag assistant, says the differences in the barn in mid-August could be felt almost immediately.

The coating has also been put on the sides and roof of a barn owned by chicken farmer John Overmeyer of Flamborough Township, who says the sides and roof of the coated barn are definitely cooler to the touch on sunny days. He can now open up his side vents when ventilating because the air coming in under the eaves is cool.

Overmeyer hopes that the ceramic coating will minimize losses when really hot weather threatens to decimate his chicken crop. Besides, it makes the barn look good too, he says.BF