August/September 2002
Country of Origin Labelling poses imminent threat to Ontario beef exports
Expected to come into force in the United States in a little over two years, COOL will negatively affect prices, says the Canadian Cattlemen's Association. But some believe that common sense can still prevailby DON STONEMAN
Barring an abrupt change of heart, legally motivated or otherwise, Country of Origin Labelling (COOL) will come into effect in the United States in a little over two years and Ontario agriculture will suffer."We are trying to prepare for the worst," says Stan Eby of Kincardine, Ontario's board member on the Canadian Cattlemen's Association (CCA). What will be the effect on prices? "We aren't sure, other than it will be negative," Eby says.
Canada's beef dependency on the United States is startling. Nearly 60 per cent of this country's beef production is exported, about half of it south of the border. About one million head of beef cattle per year are sold into the United States. Last year's total of 1.3 million was swollen largely because of drought on the Prairies. An early sell-off occurred because of a lack of grass and also high feed costs.
Ontario exports close to half of its beef, mostly as packed beef, although a fair percentage of Ontario cattle also moves live to American plants for processing.
American buyers have regular seats at auction sales at the stockyards in Cookstown, at Ontario Livestock Exchange (OLEX) in Waterloo and at Brussels Sales Yard. Central Livestock in Elmira also does a thriving business with the United States, Eby says.
The reverberations will be felt on the cow-calf side as well. "Margins (for feeding) are tight. This will make them even tighter," Eby says. If feedlot operators here can't afford to buy replacement cattle, they may move to the United States, "with further long-term damaging effects on our feeding industry."
The dairy industry will be hit because the majority of cull dairy cows leave the country for processing in the United States. Since the financial failure of MGI Packers in Kitchener 18 months ago, there has been no Ontario market for cull cows. That failure also left a shortfall in grinding beef in Ontario. McDonalds Restaurants of Canada was forced to purchase imported beef, abandoning a long-time policy of buying domestic. "It wasn't necessarily a policy change," Eby says. "It was a supply issue."
Eby says he hears rumors that MGI might be reopened, but there's never any confirmation. "It shows that margins are slim in that industry, too," Eby says.
Many structural changes are taking place throughout the beef industry, Eby says, with Country of Origin Labelling " the most immediate one. We are vulnerable to trade action. Whether we like it or not, it is one of the realities that we have to anticipate." Eby is unequivocal in stating that COOL "is a trade action in itself."
He say there may be trade actions in the United States, "depending on how the regulations are developed." Retailers and packers are not pleased with this, he says.
On the positive side, it is possible that Ontario beef will displace imports in markets here. Ontario produces beef that fits into the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Choice grade, so quality isn't an issue, Eby says.
Any effect on the livestock industry in Ontario will affect crops as well. Brian Doidge, economist with the Ontario Corn Producers Association, says cattle (beef and dairy) and hogs in Ontario consume about 100 million bushels of corn annually. (Another 50 million bushels is consumed by the poultry industry.)
Dennis Laycraft, the CCA's executive vice-president, remains positive that mandatory Country of Origin Labelling may yet be headed off. For now it is voluntary and he thinks that, with the difficulties involved in making it mandatory, labelling may be left up to the packer and the retailer.
Doug Kaufman, Woodstock, a director of the Ontario Cattle Feeders Association, also hopes that common sense will yet prevail.
"A lot of interesting things are going to happen if they carry everything out," he predicts. And, in the meantime, the American beef industry is still trying to get Canadian health rules changed so that U.S. feeder cattle can travel north in summer. The Americans get more protectionist all the time, he says.BF
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TB outbreak in Peterborough area puts focus on biosecurity
But so far, unlike recent cases in Manitoba, it hasn't jeopardized Ontario's status with the U.S. department of Agricultureby DON STONEMAN
Inspectors at packing plants keep a sharp lookout for telltale lesions on the lungs of slaughtered animals. In the case of a Peterborough-area dairy herd, where tuberculosis was discovered in early summer, the animal never made it to slaughter.This infected herd was discovered after a veterinarian performed a post-mortem on a five-month-old animal that died on a farm, says Jim Clark, chief of animal health and production for Ontario with the Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CIFA). The apparent cause of death was pneumonia. The vet submitted body tissue samples to the University of Guelph's laboratory for analysis and they tested positive for a tuberculosis-causing mycobacterium. Further testing proved that it was a bovine form.
Clark says four more animals were ordered destroyed and sent directly to the CIFA lab in Ottawa for testing. "We determined the herd was infected. It had already been quarantined and all the animals were destroyed," Clark says. All animals that had left the herd were found and also ordered destroyed. "We went back a year from when we knew that the herd was infected," Clark says.
Milk still on the farm was quarantined and held until the presence of the disease was determined and then it was destroyed.
Using records from Dairy Farmers of Ontario, milk that had already been shipped from the farm was traced to the processing plant, where it was made into cheddar cheese. While milk for cheese production is heated to within a couple of degrees of the pasteurization temperature, Clark says it was determined that conditions during cheese making and storage would have made the myco-bacterium which transmits tuberculosis nonviable.
Owners of infected livestock are reimbursed under the federal Health of Animals Act. The owner must clean and disinfect the premises after the animals ordered destroyed have left and must wait another 30 days after the cleaning to restock. Replacement animals will be retested at specific intervals for as long as four years. If the owner waits a year to restock, no testing is required.
It has been a decade since bovine tuberculosis has been found in an animal in Ontario, Clark says. In that case, the disease was found in a beef herd, and there were "linkages to a herd of (domestic) elk that we had depopulated prior to that."
Clark says either "fairly close contact" between cattle and other animals or shared access to heavily contaminated areas are deemed necessary to spread the disease.
Several cases of tuberculosis have been reported in cattle herds in Manitoba in recent years and those herds have also been destroyed. In those cases, the source of infection was determined to have been infected elk in Riding Mountain National Park, and in all cases the infected livestock were beef cattle.
The cases in Manitoba have changed that province's status as far as the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) is concerned. "Once you go beyond one infected herd in a five-year period, your status changes," Clark says. This makes the export of livestock more difficult.
So has Ontario's changed in the USDA's eyes? "Not yet," Clark replied. Because of the nature of tuberculosis, it remains fairly contained. "It's not a brushfire disease like foot-and-mouth disease."
On the other hand, it's not easy to determine where the disease came from, says David Alves, provincial veterinarian with the Ontario Ministry of Agriculture and Food. "Animals can go dormant or hide symptoms for many years," Alves says. "It's a difficult one." Bio-security remains a top priority, he says. "Unfortunately that's the way it is these days."
Most of the 35 reportable diseases are transmitted from cattle themselves or from people who work with cattle. Whenever you bring new cattle in or board cattle, or have visitors from cattle farms, you have to be aware of the risks to biosecurity, he says. "We can debate all day on the peripheral causes. Most of the time the diseases come from cattle themselves. You need a consultation with your veterinarian any time you bring animals into the herd." BF
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Spring 2002 - the fifth coldest on record for most of Canada
However, higher than usual precipitation helped restore Great Lakes water levels and a warm, wet summer is forecast for south-central Ontarioby HENRY HENGEVELD
According to recent reports from American climate experts, spring temperatures around the world continued to reflect a planet that seems to be warming up. Following record-setting temperatures in January and February temperatures that were the second warmest since 1880, March came in at record values of 0.77C above the long-term average. April 2002 was also the second warmest on record.While global data for May are not yet available, extreme heat also seemed to make the news for that month. In particular, the sub-continent of India fried in early May, with a week-long heat wave in southern regions reaching unprecedented temperatures of 49C. This contributed to more than 1000 related deaths.
So what happened to Canada? Rather than a hot spring, temperatures throughout most of the country were well below normal. In fact, the spring of 2002 was the fifth coldest since nation-wide record keeping began 55 years, breaking a long string of 19 consecutive seasons with average Canadian temperatures warmer than normal. Only the Atlantic Provinces and the high Arctic managed to escape this countrywide deep freeze.
It was inevitable, of course, that the normal variability in our weather from one year to the next would, sooner or later, interrupt the long string of consecutive warm seasons, but it does make one wonder why it had to do so with such dramatic style.
Compared to many parts of the country, the Great Lakes Basin-St. Lawrence region of Ontario actually didn't do too badly -- at least on average. There were, of course, the very cold mornings in mid-May, when for several nights the mercury dropped below freezing in many localities when it wasn't really supposed to. But then April also provided a very warm spell when daytime highs in some regions of Southern Ontario hovered around 30C.
As a result the regional temperatures for the season came in at only 0.3C below the long-term average, making this spring only the 11th coldest. Needless to say, this is small comfort to the many Ontario farmers who were affected by the late-season cool period -- and a cogent reminder that averages are not always a good indicator of well being.
Western Canada didn't do as well. Both the Prairies and the territories above rang in at about 4C below average, giving both regions their coldest spring on record.
Unlike the uniformity of the cool spring temperatures, the pattern of precipitation behaviour across Canada was a picture of contrasts. While nationally averaged precipitation was about six per cent above normal, the Great Lakes Basin received 33 per cent more precipitation than normal, more than offsetting the shortage of precipitation during this past winter.
While the May water levels in the upper three Great Lakes still remain below their long-term averages, that for Lake Erie had returned to near-normal levels, and Lake Ontario is now about 20 centimeters above its average level. How quickly such things can change!
The excess precipitation was also a welcome relief for the recharge of depleted ground waters in much of the province and provided some assurance that this summer would start with a higher water table than last year -- in fact, too high for many of those low lying wet spots. Southern B.C. and northern Manitoba were also very wet.
In sharp contrast was the continuing drought in the Prairies, and the low precipitation levels in the western Arctic and northern B.C. These deficits are particularly worrisome for Prairie farmers, who have now experienced several years of consecutive drought, with little relief in sight. Similar intense drought is also evident in several regions south of the border, particularly along the American Atlantic coast.
Seasonal projections for south-central Ontario, released in early June, suggest a somewhat warm, wet summer. Sounds like a great season for some booming thunderstorms, as well as a challenge for those trying to keep our local air breathable. The news for the Prairies is less encouraging. Drought in the southern regions, where the moisture deficit is the greatest, is projected to continue for at least the summer. A number of Prairie farm regions have already been declared disaster areas, and more may soon follow.
Fall and winter seasons are projected to be warm across all of southern Canada, with dry conditions in eastern Canada, including south-central Ontario. Also good news is the promise in the seasonal forecasts of extra precipitation for the Prairies for both seasons. Finally! Maybe!
So how come Canadian temperatures this past spring seem to have been out of sync with those for much of the rest of the world? Analysts suggest the simple answer is blowing in the wind! A shift in the circumpolar air circulation during the season pushed cold north winds further south than normal, keeping most of us in the frigid zone. Now if we could only explain the more complex question of why the air circulation changed! BF
Henry Hengeveld is senior science advisor on climate change for Environment Canada.
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Liberals' rural caucus chair is on a roll
At a time when rural Liberal MPs are trying hard to demonstrate their clout, Murray Calder is turning in some concrete resultsby BARRY WILSON
Rural Liberal MPs have worked hard during this parliamentary session trying to convince their constituents that they are working hard. More to the point, they want to give the impression that they are making a difference in forcing an urban-oriented government to consider rural sensibilities.The political motive is easy to discern. Opposition MPs delight in describing rural Liberal MPs as voiceless and powerless, part of a government that brought in gun control and is now trying to impose species-at-risk and animal cruelty laws that could hurt rural Canadians.
Rural Liberals, particularly from Ontario seats that were traditionally Tory until the political earth moved in 1993, want their voters to know that their votes are not wasted on eunuch MPs. The desired message from rural MPs is: it may not always seem like it, but you do have a voice here on Parliament Hill. It would be a lot worse without us.
So the Liberal rural caucus, comprised of 40 or so MPs out of a caucus of 170, has fought back by insisting that they are more influential than is generally known. The prime minister listens to their recommendations, they say, and ministers with rural-relevant policy proposals regularly are called before rural caucus for Tuesday morning grillings.
And it is true that rural Liberal MPs have flexed some muscle in recent months to force minor concessions from ministers in animal cruelty and species-at-risk legislation. Rural caucus also has had a role in lobbying for farm aid and in supporting revisions to national agricultural policy.
Still, many of these rural caucus "victories" are little more than political pocket change. Government concessions on animal cruelty and species-at-risk bills were minor, providing these Liberal MPs with more of a face-saving gesture than a real concession. And for all the supposedly effective internal lobbying, this government is hardly seen as a government with a legacy of strong agriculture or rural policy, at least not yet.
On the other hand, the chair of rural caucus is a walking testament to the argument that individual backbench MPs, rural or urban, can have influence if they work hard. Murray Calder is a chicken farmer and three-term Liberal MP from northwest of Toronto who has turned a bedrock Tory riding into a Liberal stronghold. In 1993, he defeated 21-year Conservative star Perrin Beatty and has not been politically threatened since. And this past year, Calder has been on a roll since being elected chair of rural caucus.
Many backbenchers never get a private member's bill through Parliament and into law. This past winter, Calder saw two of his bills become law -- naming the Canadian horse as the national horse and improving legal support for voluntary firefighters. And in May, he saw the government move toward adopting his longstanding proposal of having an ombudsperson for the Pest Management Regulatory Agency. He first won approval for the idea at the Liberal caucus agriculture task force and then in the House of Commons agriculture committee. Not a bad winter's work for a backbench MP that the cynics argue really has no power to change anything. BF
Barry Wilson is a member of the Parliamentary Press Gallery specializing in agriculture.
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