Better Pork -October 2003
BEHIND THE LINES
by ROBERT IRWINYou might want to think carefully before following your doctor's orders. It seems Canadian doctors don't like pork production. In fact, during the past year, they've been speaking out increasingly against hog farms. Local medical health officers, the people whose orders and advice on public health issues we are all supposed to respect, have popped up in media across the province to support hog farm opponents.
Modern medicine is supposed to be based on science. So the doctors' attacks on our industry are based on solid research, right? Er, not exactly. Our story on page 36 shows that, where pork production is concerned, the Canadian Medical Association (CMA) seems determined not to let the facts get in the way of a strongly-held opinion.
The influential CMA has taken the position that pork industry development should be stopped until scientific studies are undertaken to prove that it is safe for humans to live and work near these barns. The CMA, it seems, is unimpressed with existing studies provided by the Canadian Pork Council. CPC supplied a study by the Saskatchewan-based Veterinary Infectious Disease Organization showing air quality beyond 600 metres downwind of a swine barn is as good as it is 2.5 km upwind.
Anyone versed in science and its burden of proof knows that it is virtually impossible to prove that something is absolutely safe. Nevertheless, this is the ground onto which the CMA has trodden. The CMA "is not in the business of adjudicating issues," Dr. Isra Levy, chairman of the CMA's Office for Public Health, says. However, it is apparent that, while the CMA isn't adjudicating issues, it certainly doesn't mind stepping into them. Unlike the CMA, rural property owners do cite studies in their opposition to new hog barns. Some U.S. research does show that hog farms depress property values on adjacent properties.
Every time someone wants to build a hog barn, it seems the most frequently repeated objection is the anticipated decline in neighbouring property values. Houses are said to decline in value by 30 to 40 per cent and more. At Better Pork, we enjoy a bargain as much as anyone, so we went in search of a discounted house near a pig farm with the vision of saving tens of thousands of dollars dancing through our heads. We didn't find our dream house, but our story on page 19 shows that having a pork-producing neighbour can lower property taxes.
BP
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back Better Pork - October 2003
Pepperettes and pork sausages, chops and collectibles - the opportunities offered by retail and direct marketing
Retail is not for everyone. But for those with the right attitude and product mix, it can help you extract more value from your animals and improve your bottom lineby SUSAN MANN
When the price of hogs crashed in 1998, Curtiss and Tonny Littlejohn seriously began to pursue their retail pork meat business.Before that, they would occasionally sell a pig for someone's freezer on request. But when the value of hogs nosedived in 1998, Curtiss says their retail meat business significantly helped them to increase their bottom line. "There's just a better margin," he explains. While there's more risk and work involved, at the end of the day there is a better return for their investment.
Retail isn't for everyone. A hog farmer who wants to pursue this type of business must have the right attitude. "You've got to understand that you're going to put more time into it. Out of every 20 people that buy, you're always going to have someone who is upset with something," he says, adding that he likes both the farming and retailing sides of their business.
Littlejohn, who was elected vice-chair of Ontario Pork's board of directors earlier this year, has a two-site, 600-sow, farrow-to-finish operation. The finishing is done at the home farm in Brant County, just north of Paris, and the sows are at another location.
In addition to their small freezer-order pork business, they have processed products -- three kinds of pepperettes, three varieties of bar stool pepperoni and fully cooked vendor sausages. Most of their 100 customers on the freezer-order side of the business have been with them for about five years or more.
Customers come from Cambridge, Kitchener and Brantford. They usually buy a whole pig, with the minimum order being half a pig. Littlejohn takes the animal to a local abattoir for cutting and smoking to the customer's specifications. "We get a deposit up front," he says.
The specialty products are custom fabricated locally to their specifications, fully cooked and vacuum packed. This is the type of product today's consumer is looking for and on which the Littlejohns have been concentrating their efforts. The specialty processed products account for half of their business and are sold to local variety stores. Some of the vendor sausages are also sold to chip wagons.
Littlejohn supplied the recipe for the specialty products after experimenting with different ingredients. "It's a long process and you have to eat all your mistakes," he explains.
A pepperette is like a small sausage that is six inches long and half an inch in diameter, while the bar-stool pepperoni is like a big pepperette. Those and the vendor sausages are all made with 100 per cent pork. He describes them as top-end products that are made from the whole hog and not just the trimmings.
Most customers buy the pepperettes and pepperoni to have with a beer. "Our hope is we can get this product well enough accepted in pubs that people will go in and ask for a beer and a Littlejohn Bar Stool Pepperoni."
Maple-smoked hams from Manitoulin
Similarly, it was a desire to get more value from his animals that led Manitoulin Island farmer Max Burt into retailing meat directly to consumers. In 1993, when he started the farm, Burt shipped a culled sow to Kitchener. He recalls getting $75 for the animal, the same amount he paid for transportation. "So I thought, 'Farming has got to get better than this.' The only way was to capture more of the value of the animal."Burt began by selling meat from a small walk-in freezer. After getting nowhere at a bank that he approached for a start-up loan, he convinced 10 friends and neighbours to contribute $1,000 each in exchange for food over a five-year term.
Over time, Burt slowly took over various further processing tasks to produce his meat. For example, he used to send product to Sudbury to be smoked. But it's a two-hour drive from his farm and the logistics of getting product there and back didn't work very well. So he built a small smokehouse from a refrigerator that would hold five slabs of bacon. That one has since been replaced by a stainless steel smokehouse . Similarly when his local abattoir closed and the next nearest was more than three hours drive away, Burt built his own, which is audited annually and inspected by the province. In a building formerly used for boiler turkeys, Burt put in a retail store, abattoir, coolers and cutting area. He runs the kill floor an average of once every two to three weeks. Currently, he only kills the animals he produces on his farm. "There are only so many hours in the day."
With their pigs, Burt and his wife, Johanna, make maple-smoked hams, sausages, smoked bacon, stir-fry products, marinated spare ribs and a fully cooked pork roast and gravy. They also sell pigs for barbequing.
Most of the pork meat is sold directly to consumers from Toronto, Burlington, Ottawa, Sudbury, Ste. Sault Marie and local island residents, with a very small amount going to local restaurants and stores.
In addition to operating the store, Burt Farm Country Meats, Burt farms 1,200 acres of rented and owned land on the island. He grows cereal grains, has a cow-calf operation, a small 14-sow, farrow-to-finish business and some turkeys. "When I talk about farrow-to-finish, I talk about farrow to a pound of bacon or a package of marinated stir-fry pork or a ham," he explains.
Is his retail business financially viable? Burt says on a dollar-per-hour basis he could probably make more money sweeping a floor in a school. "I think every farmer in Canada could say the same thing." But what Burt is trying to do is get all the money he can from each pig. "The costs of doing it on the processing side of it are probably far higher than I initially planned."
Sausage for sale
Another retail business that has evolved over time is The Best Little Pork Shoppe, operated by Linda and Gerry Knechtel near Stratford. Today the on-farm store, located on Highways 7 and 8 near Shakespeare, carries a full range of pork meat products, including sausage, pork steaks, smoked chops, smoked back ribs, tenderloin, bacon and hams, along with baked goods, cheese, beef steaks, lamb, condiments and cute farm animal collectibles. In the nine months of the year they are open, they sell about 42 tons of pork.But it wasn't always that way. Shakespeare View Farms used to be a breeding farm until the Knechtels got out of the pig production business to focus on retail. It began in 1987 after a pig broke its leg. They already had a freezer load of pork for their own use so they had this 300-pound pig made into sausage. They advertised that they had sausage for sale on an outside portable sign and people came to the front door of the house
. The first year they only processed a few pigs. But the next year "one day there were over 30 people in our house waiting to be served," Gerry recalls. "I came in from the barn and I couldn't even get up the stairway in our kitchen because there were people everywhere."
Similarly, the farm-themed collectibles side of the business was started after people wanted to buy things out of Linda's china cabinets.
One factor that pushed them towards retail was Gerry's health. In 1988, he was in a bad car accident and, for almost two years after, he couldn't work in the barn or lift anything heavier than 10 pounds. "We didn't know what his future was going to be like," recalls Linda, "and maybe retail was something that he would be able to do."
The pigs for their sausages come from Orchard Park Farms and TOPGEN Swine, both located north of Woodstock, while Krug's of Tavistock makes them.
They work closely with five small, independent government-inspected meat packers to supply the other carefully selected products. New products are added in response to customer requests and after careful investigation. The emphasis at The Best Little Pork Shoppe is on superior quality and taste. The Knechtels don't sell anything they don't like themselves. "I liken it to having the kind of quality and the products that I grew up with on the farm as a kid," Gerry says.
For farmers considering a similar business, Linda and Gerry advise them to start small, build gradually and ensure you have a visible location on a well-travelled road. In addition, "one of the things we decided when we first started in retail, not really knowing where it was going to end up, was that it was never going to put us in debt," Linda says.
There don't seem to be any figures on the number of farmers who market pork directly to consumers. Ontario Pork's director of communications Keith Robbins says they have no way of even trying to assess it. The Ontario Ministry of Agriculture and Food (OMAF) doesn't have any numbers on this specific category either.
Helen Prinold, OMAF client account officer for food distribution, who provides information to people starting up restaurants and retail businesses, says she generally answers 50 to 75 calls a year from farmers and rural residents looking to sell goods from farm-based outlets, from stores located in towns or other visible locations. It isn't known how many of those are hog farmers planning to do direct marketing of their pork.
Easing market fluctuations
Like other farmers, the owners of Acre-T Farms, Joe and Miriam Terpstra and family, wanted to get more value out of their pigs. So they started their own packing plant last July -- the West Perth plant in Mitchell. The plant is a joint venture owned by Miriam Terpstra of Brussels and Larry and Glenn Tulpin, who run St. Williams-based Norfolk Packers.The plant was started because Acre-T was getting to the size "where we had a supply of hogs that was big enough to make it feasible," explains Dave Frank, Acre-T marketing manager. Acre-T Farms is a three-site farrow-to-finish operation with 15,000 sows.
A total of 5,500 hogs a week are processed through the plant, which employs 60 workers. Almost all hogs come from Acre-T. Franks notes that they can tell customers how they raise their animals and the genetics they use. "It also gave us the flexibility to tailor our product for specific markets."
Most of their product is sold in Ontario, though some is sold to further processors and some is exported, mainly to the United States. But they also have customers in China, New Zealand and Jamaica. Currently, the packing plant is mainly marketing primal cuts. There have been a few hiccups during the first year of operations. "But it actually went a lot smoother than we expected it to," Frank says.
Having a stake in a packing plant has changed the focus of Acre-T Farms from selling live hogs to selling pork. "I guess we feel the closer we can get to the consumer the better it's going to be for us."
Acre-T also hopes that, by having its own packing plant could help stabilize the fluctuations in hog markets. "The profitability of the plant and the farm tend to be opposite of each other," Franks says. "When hogs are cheap, the packing plant makes a lot of money; when hogs are expensive, the farm makes good money."
Frank doubts that small packing plants will pop up all over Ontario. But during the past few years there has been a trend in farming in general for farmers to put together a larger production system, either by working with a packer or through contract production. He thinks that trend will continue.
There are some farmers who once had a direct marketing business as part of their hog operation, but have quit for various reasons. Bob Bedggood, former president of the Christian Farmers Federation of Ontario, used to have a 450-sow farrow-to-finish hog operation and a red veal business on his 350-acre farm just east of London. In addition he had a barbecued pig business for 15 years, where he would barbecue pigs for a wide variety of London-area customers, such as associations, community groups, churches, and families celebrating weddings or other events.
His age and the closure of his local abattoir made him decide it was time to quit the livestock portion of his farming operation three years ago, but he still grows cash crops and a small amount of horticultural produce. Bob and his wife Sandy's direct marketing business began after Bob barbecued a pig for a family picnic, using a barbecue on wheels he built from a 250-gallon oil drum. Eventually he had three barbecues and averaged five to six barbecues a year, once barbecuing three big hogs because they needed 620 pounds of meat to feed a big crowd. Generally he'd begin cooking the pig at home and tow the barbecue behind his truck to the event.
Having an abattoir located within five miles of his home enhanced food safety, he says, because he was able to pick the pig up 30 minutes to one hour before he had to begin barbecuing. "I wasn't prepared to pick a hog up at 3 or 5 p.m. and have it sit around in the hot weather until I started to cook it," he recalls.
Bedggood says he had an excellent relationship with the local abattoir. In cases when he had to start cooking at midnight, the owner would meet him at the door just before then so he could pick the pig up. Along with having the pig inspected, the abattoir would gut it, split it and even cater to Bedggood's preference for having the head and feet removed.
Small abattoirs closing
Since 1991, has lost about 40 per cent of its local abattoirs, a situation of concern to the National Farmers Union (NFU). In June, the Perth-Oxford branch organized a meeting in Stratford to discuss ways the provincial government can support small abattoirs. They came up with a number of ideas that should be implemented immediately, says David Pullen, the branch president.Government regulations targeted to large packing plants are wiping out small abattoirs, says the NFU, which strongly supports enhanced food safety regulations and a strengthened inspection system. But it argues that many of the regulations being imposed on small abattoirs are inappropriate.
It's the small abattoirs that are willing and able to cater to specialty markets, such as certified organic, which is why the NFU believes they are so important. The best way for farmers to challenge market concentration by big multinational corporations is to create a partnership with consumers by marketing products directly to them. But without local abattoirs, direct marketing and farmer/consumer partnerships are impossible.
Dr. Tom Baker, director of OMAF's food inspection branch, disagrees with the NFU's view that government regulations are forcing small abattoirs out of business. There has been a shift during the past 20 years Baker explains. Ontario has changed with fewer farmers and fewer people inclined to have custom killing done. Most of the abattoirs were very small and catered to the freezer or custom-kill trade. "Some of the abattoirs that were just catering to that business found that there wasn't enough business for them and they made a decision to close," he says.
A 1999 OMAF study 1999 found that 16 per cent of the plants that closed shut their doors because of government regulations. "So all the rest of them were for other reasons," Baker explains.
But Pullen says it's impossible to sell an abattoir because the new owners have to come right up to the new standards immdeiately. "There's just nobody who wants to be saddled with that kind of debt."
Baker sees abattoirs as facing challenges, but by and large it's strong and finding new markets, especially among ethnic groups.
One thing OMAF looks at is how much of the total slaughter in Ontario goes through federally-inspected plants versus provincially-inspected ones. The numbers vary by species, but for hogs it's about 15 per cent. Generally about 20 per cent of the slaughter takes place in provincially-licensed abattoirs. "The key point here is the slaughter activity in provincially licensed plants is increasing every year by about five per cent," he says. And even though there are fewer plants, there are still 200, and that number has been fairly stable for a while.
Baker considers there is reason for optimism, even though some areas have lost their local abattoir. That's a loss and it's unfortunate. "But certainly the government is not forcing them out." He notes that government regulations are designed to protect the public from food-borne illnesses and at the same time OMAF is trying to ensure these plants can be competitive and grow. BP
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back Better Pork - October 2003
"Whole Hog" sausages find a ready market
by KAREN DALLIMORE
Godden's Whole Hog Sausage started in 1998 as a "side business to a side business" when dairy farmers Ben and Lori Godden of Campbellford bought another farm with a pig barn on it and decided to set up a farrow-to-wean operation with 55 sows. Susie Caughey, Lori's mom, convinced her that she should finish some weaners to make sausage just like she used to get back home in Indiana, and the rest is history.Now, instead of selling all of the weaners at 50 pounds, they keep back two to four hogs a week, raise them to market weight of 220-250 pounds in the "sausage pen" and ship them to be processed. It costs $2 per pound to raise the animal and have it butchered, to be returned as frozen sausage links that retail at $4 per pound.
"We're probably making way less money, but it's way more fun," says Lori. The biggest challenge so far has been to co-ordinate supply with demand.
The sausage is a gourmet specialty product that sells as regular, honey garlic and tomato oregano, in five and ten-pound boxes, through two local produce markets and five local restaurants. It is unique in that it uses the whole hog, including the loin and ham, with no fillers to produce a lean, premium product. The Goddens will also cater to special product requests, such as hot Italian spicing or bulk packaging. "The real key to selling this stuff is letting people taste it."
Lori encourages restaurants to market it as a unique product on their menu and is approaching more restaurants and specialty markets as outlets. Meanwhile, she will be honing her marketing skills through college courses to take the business to the next level. BP
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back Better Pork - October 2003
Make sure you follow the rules and regulations governing on-farm sales
If you're considering setting up a business to market your pork directly to customers, there are a number of regulations you'll have to follow. Here is a brief run down of things to consider, along with where to go for help in starting up your business.Farmers can call Helen Prinold, OMAF client account officer for food distribution, at 519-826-4449 for advice and information. She also suggests contacting Ontario Pork and talking over your ideas with them.
The first thing to keep in mind if you plan to sell meat is that the animal must be slaughtered in a provincially- or federally-inspected abattoir.
The plant can cut and wrap the meat, but the farmer must ensure it is packaged and weighed correctly for retail sales.
All food sold in Canada must conform to the federal Food and Drug and Consumer Packaging and Labeling Acts. "Basically there is mandatory stuff that needs to go on the label," Prinold says. More information on labelling requirements can be found at this Web site - www.inspection.gc.ca/english/bureau/labeti/guide/guidee.shtml .
Municipal regulations must also be kept in mind. Each municipality has its own rules governing what can and can't be sold from the farm gate. "Most of them say that you can sell the products from your own farm at the end of road without having to go through another whole process," explains Prinold. But farmers should check with their municipality about what rules would apply to them and ensure that there are no objections. Farmers also need to check municipal rules governing where signs can be placed.
More rules apply if a farmer decides to sell crafts or produce from neighbouring farms, in addition to their own. "When you get into selling multiple products, you've essentially become an on-farm grocery store or craft store," she explains.
Moreover, the building on the farm where the products are sold becomes a commercial space, instead of an agricultural space, just like a grocery store on a downtown street. Farmers must apply to have that space rezoned to commercial. But farmers who just sell their own products out of their home don't need to do this.
Doing the rezoning is important. Municipalities have shut down on-farm retail stores until the process has been completed in cases where farmers haven't done the rezoning first. The part of the land that is rezoned to commercial is then put into a higher property tax bracket.
A decision to have an on-farm retail store may also affect the amount you have to pay in tax from farm income. Prinold notes that Revenue Canada says that if the income from retail sales is a small portion of your overall farm income, then you can count it as farm income. But when it becomes a more significant part of your business, you have to declare it separately and it becomes a retail business.
Revenue Canada decides the significance of an on-farm retail business on a case-by-case basis. When you get the ruling from them, ensure that it is in writing.
On-farm commercial stores where food is sold are also subject to Ontario's health regulations for food premises. Among other things, these rules govern safe food practices and the temperature at which food should be kept.
Prinold also recommends that farmers get business insurance. This isn't a requirement, but it's a good business practice in case anything goes wrong. With insurance your personal farm assets aren't at risk. BP
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back Better Pork - October 2003
A successful farm store off the beaten track
by DON STONEMAN
Ask anyone who runs a farm store and they will tell that location is everything. But not so for Fred and Ingrid des Martines.Their farm is located a couple of miles away from Highway 8, west of Stratford, on a gravel road, which turns off all but the most persistent consumers.
Customers still beat a path to the door of the little store beside their house at the end of a long tree-lined lane. However, direct-to-consumer sales are becoming less important to the business than deliveries to restaurants and stores. "That's how we make our business grow," says Fred des Martines. "We aren't really retailers, we're wholesalers."
Fred and Ingrid des Martines run a nursery and finishing operation for 1,800 hogs and are known for the wild boars they raise on the side for local restaurants. They also run a freezer trade business featuring their homegrown pork.
They ship their pigs to a federally inspected plant and ask that some of their carcasses be segregated. Their pigs are cut into primals -- legs, loins, hams with and without bone, bellies with and without ribs.
Fred and Ingrid buy back the primals that they know they can sell, typically chops and steaks for the barbecue in the summer, hams and shoulders in the winter. Hams, in particular are in demand at Christmas and Easter, while restaurants will buy smoked legs for the buffet year round.
A refrigerator truck takes the primal cuts from the federal plant to a couple of provincial abattoirs, where they are turned into different products. Not every abattoir is good at everything, Fred. One plant might smoke pork chops while another prepares and packages something else. The cuts are vacuum-packed and boxed at the abattoir and arrive at the farm already packaged. This is necessary to meet stringent health regulations. "We never physically touch the meat on the farm," Fred says.
Four-ounce sausages, for example, are packaged four in a vacuum pack. Chops are sold in five and 10 pound boxes.
In spring and early summer, the des Martines stockpile meat at a cold storage in Baden. A skid holds 1,000 pounds of meat. "We are supplying more and more stores," says Fred. A couple of their specialties are teriyaki steaks and honey mustard steaks, for which Fred brought the recipes from Holland.
Smoked pork chops from the whole loin are also popular sellers. (The difference between a steak and a chop is that the steak is from only parts of the loin, without the backribs, and there are no bones in it.) BP
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back It's time to brag a little about the pork industry
Our success is global, but our challenge is local. Let's stand proud when we talk about our industry to our rural and urban neighbours
by RICHARD SMELSKI
It's time to boast a little about the things pork producers do and have done over the years.The pig industry, and especially the Ontario pig industry, has a lot to be proud of, but we are not telling our neighbours or urban friends just how good we are as stewards of our pigs and land.
We have continuously improved pork quality and at the same time reduced cost. There is 35 per cent less fat on pigs now than 20 years ago (12 mm versus 18 mm). In addition, the pigs are marketed three weeks earlier (160 days versus 180 days) and consume less feed in the same period (estimates are more than 25 per cent less). Less feed means less manure and more land to put it on.
Ultra sounds, environmental controllers, gas measurements, robotics, DNA tracing and computer programs are only a few of the examples of the latest technologies used to maintain progress. As a result, our pork products and programs are world market leaders, and all this while reducing the cost to the consumer. The waitress's tip now takes a bigger share of the restaurant dollar than the farmer gets.
The strength of the industry lies in its dedicated people. There are approximately 400,000 sows in Ontario and each is cared for each day as an individual -- precisely fed and watered, identified, recorded, vaccinated and managed appropriately. Feed is balanced for at least 35 nutrients. Equipment is strategically designed for pig comfort and production. Animal welfare, although always improving, is among the best in the world. Our expertise is respected and sought worldwide.
Much of pigmanship training starts in infancy and advances to the teenage years. The work ethic of our pig farmers is recognized within and beyond the industry. The service sector to the pig industry is also competitive and dedicated. The skill set of the industry provides a competitive advantage over most global competitors. New barns and biosecurity guidelines have created many misgivings -- more so with rural neighbours than urban dwellers. Open houses, newsletters, letters to the editor industry participation, peer evaluation and common courtesy are all essential in preventing antagonisms and fostering goodwill.
Pork producers need to be proud of their advancements and accomplishments. Instead, many farmers who purchase a farm, a tractor or build a barn are almost ashamed of their success. Yet surveys still show that farmers are trusted more than other professionals in society are.
I suspect the fable about the trial that was done with two very similar cars would still hold true. Both cars had their hood open, one in a rural area, the other in an urban setting. In days, the urban vehicle was stripped of its tires, doors and even its motor. Meanwhile, somebody was kind enough to close the hood of the country car so the rain wouldn't enter.
The same farm integrity still exists, because we see nature as nature was intended to be --birth, death, breeding, illness, response to care. Indeed, the response the caregivers receive from their animals is the same as they give to them. The barns might look different, we do business a little differently, but rural integrity remains the same. Ontario Pork does an excellent job in promoting the pork industry, especially with their images that depict farmers as desirable neighbours. But more pork producers must be ambassadors for their own industry by participating in community affairs, writing more to the press, standing proud at functions, responding to statements and keeping our urban friends informed. Our success is global; our challenge is local. BP
Richard Smelski is general manager of Ontario Swine Improvement Inc. and a former Ontario government swine specialist.
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back by MURRAY BLACKIE
CURRENTLY UNAVAILABLE BPMurray Blackie is the former agricultural specialist with the Ministry of the Environment and is now a consultant, expert witness and writer on agro-environmental issues.
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