Carcasses at Queen's Park get media attention

Monday, May 4, 2009

Farm groups concerned about the image of agriculture gave a collective groan when Sunderland farmer Bill Denby posed on the front page of the National Post on Mar. 19, raising the carcass of a 1,000-pound decomposing steer high above his skid steer loader. The accompanying story outlined concerns about the provincial government ending subsidies for deadstock pickup.

Denby, who retails meat to cottagers from his farm in Kawartha Lakes, says that the "bad" publicity about agriculture doesn't hurt. "My sales are doing fine and I've been front page all over the place," he says, asserting that his "mostly urban" customers appreciate knowing that dead animals don't end up in the food chain.

Denby, who describes himself as a "free spirit," enjoys tweaking mainstream farm organizations. Last fall, Denby and other local farmers won a ruling from the Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs Tribunal that Dairy Farmers of Ontario acted improperly when it imposed a 15 per cent assessment on dairy quota sales in 2006.

Minister of Agriculture Leona Dombrowsky refused to overturn that decision, but Denby isn't picking favourites. He argues that the minister is "dead wrong" to put agriculture at risk to save $5 million annually on deadstock collection.

Denby says that he made his media connections when he campaigned during a provincial byelection earlier in the year for the Freedom Party.

"Toronto media understand the (deadstock) issue," Denby told Better Farming the evening after displaying dead carcasses for cameras outside Queen's Park just before the budget. "We walk in through the door with a solution to the problem."

The solution Denby and some deadstock operators propose is a checkoff on all livestock transactions, with proceeds going into a fund which farmers can draw from when dead animals must be hauled away for rendering. Denby says that a similar fund is used in Prince Edward Island.

Denby got fewer votes than in the previous election, and the budget didn't address the issue of deadstock subsidization, says Graeme Hedley, who supervises the now defunct collection subsidization program. Denby's proposal for a checkoff on cattle sales was put to Dairy Farmers of Ontario and the Ontario Cattlemen's Association several years ago, Hedley says. "The pretty strong message that came back was 'no way.'" BF