by SUSAN MANN
The Ontario government is giving Ontario Pork $2 million immediately to help it deal with porcine epidemic diarrhea virus (PED).
During a telephone meeting this afternoon organized by Ontario Pork to update producers on the virus outbreak in the province, Premier and Agriculture Minister Kathleen Wynne said the money is earmarked for setting up assembly yards, processor transfer chutes and ongoing cleaning and sanitation of transport trailers.
Almost 1,200 people were on the call, including many Ontario farmers along with officials from other provinces and the United States. It lasted slightly more than an hour.
A newly dedicated stream of money under Growing Forward 2, the national agricultural policy framework, will also be made “specifically available for those in the swine industry,” said Wynne, who stayed on the call for about 30 minutes while her officials stayed on for the entire call.
The provincial government will administer the fund and is broadening out the eligibility criteria to give producers, truckers, assembly facilities and processors access to the support they need to make their own biosecurity investments. Assistance through the fund is in addition to assistance that would normally be available under Growing Forward 2, says a press release issued jointly by the provincial and federal governments.
Photo: Kathleen Wynne
“We recognize there are investments that need to be made and that you need that reassurance quickly that the money will be there for you,” Wynne said during the call. Applications under the newly dedicated stream of money are being accepted from now until March 13.
Ontario Pork chair Amy Cronin said the funding announcement “is really fantastic news and I think it speaks to the provincial government’s ongoing commitment to our industry.”
The government money will help the industry “with some of the initiatives we’ve already started to help manage this disease,” Cronin said.
To manage PED, Ontario Pork’s strategy has changed from preventative measures before the first confirmed case showed up in Ontario Jan. 22 to risk reduction, Cronin noted. “Ontario Pork is working with the ministry on a containment strategy and elements of this strategy have already begun.”
Cronin said their focus is now on critical control points, including assembly yards, federal and provincial processors, local abattoirs, farms, disposal and transportation. “This includes a dedicated truck wash in Lucan (TE Smith Transport & Logistics Ltd.), testing at plants and assembly yards and producer education on biosecurity practices.”
Photo: Trailers waiting to be cleaned at TE Smith Transport & Lotistics Ltd.
Matt Smith, who manages TE Smith’s truck wash operations, said the business was informed at the beginning of January that it would be the designated location to clean livestock trucks returning from the United States after delivering pigs there. He said initially, they were washing 30 to 70 trucks a week but the activity slowed in recent days following the discovery of PED in the province. He said he anticipates the volume will increase again following the funding announcements.
It costs $400 to $600 to wash a truck, he said.
Smith said veterinarians, Ontario Pork, transport companies and TE Smith have developed the specialized cleaning protocols. “There’s a lot of protocols,” he said.
During the call, those listening in were asked if they had taken extra biosecurity measures to protect their business from PED. Only 14 per cent said they hadn’t taken additional precautions.
Wynne said the government “is here to help producers through this challenge.” She pledged to emphasize when speaking publically that Ontario pork remains safe to eat and the virus does not affect food safety or pose a risk to human health or other animals except for pigs. “It’s very important to us that we maintain market stability and consumer confidence.”
Greg Douglas, Ontario’s chief veterinarian, said the first farm infected is a 500-sow farrow-to-finish operation in Middlesex County. It was confirmed to have the virus last Wednesday. Another farm confirmed to have it is a weaner-to-finish operation in Chatham-Kent, while a third case in the same region is suspected to have it.
Douglas said samples from other farms are also in line to be investigated.
The ministry is broadening its surveillance and investigation to get “a good sense of the situation that we were dealing with,” he said, adding the ministry is working closely with its epidemiologist and Ontario Pork to put “measures in place to mitigate the spread of the disease.”
The virus does very well in winter months. It almost totally wipes out very young piglets; older pigs have diarrhea and vomiting but can recover.
Wynne said the ministry is covering the costs associated with lab testing for suspected PED cases.
Wynne said she understands the seriousness of the virus and its economic impact. “I also understand Ontario’s farmers obviously place a very high value on their livestock and that goes far beyond dollars and cents. You’ve invested time and energy in caring for your animals. Obviously losing animals to illness is never easy.”
Since PED was first found in the United States last year the province and industry have made a concerted effort to educate producers, transporters and suppliers about it. “The level of cooperation and collaboration between ministry officials and the industry has been very, very high,” Wynne said.
Wynne also announced she is hosting a telephone conference call on Thursday with federal, provincial and territorial agriculture ministers to tell them what Ontario is doing “and be able to continue discussions on a national approach to the virus.”
photo: Amy Cronin
In her opening remarks, Cronin praised the farmers whose operations have contracted the PED virus for their cooperation “that they’ve shown during this difficult time. I can assure you we are doing everything we can to track and contain this virus and protect the industry.” BF
- with files from Better Farming staff
Comments
So will this be the new start of Adhoc dollars and programs ?
What is wrong with RMP dollars ?
Not sure how you would use RMP money as that is on production ,no pigs-no cheque ,no crop ins. claim.....I don't know if Ont. Pork asked for any funds or not , I am not in favor of Ad Hoc programs but it is coming election time and Liberals have to show some leadership , and what do people want for a swine industry in Ontario? good luck to all involved-kg kimball
Well I guess finally some one else figured out what I have known for a while . It is a gutted inadequate program . Like one of the Farm Ag leaders told me , the commodities signed up for it so now live with it .
look it up give it a try.It will kill it(PED not the pig)
Its great for the cold and flu also.
"Great for"? According which scientific authorities?
Lot's of claims it will cure cancer and a host of other diseases too.
I'm aware of many warnings about this product but no credible evidence that it can be used as an antiviral product in situations like PED.
I'm assuming you have peer-reviewed research to support this unusual claim? Could you post the citations please?
The RMP as “originally designed” by G&O commodities was a stiff premium based
program that gave us great price protection against other countries grain price subsidies.
However, when other livestock, hort and F&V commodities wanted in under the RMP umbrella rather than stand-alone separate named programs things got real complicated and messy. Even though for the most part those extra commodities export markets were not getting a lot of subsidy protection, the Ontario government allowed them in. However, the gov’t immediately added a non negotiable $100mil overall CAP which neutered the program when all commodities trigger payments the same year.
Now couple that $100 mil CAP with the original G&O $125,000 producer cap or $375,000 corp cap and it still seemed doable. However, when other commodities were allowed in, now the G&O cap has suddenly mushroomed to $1.2 million per farmer and the "multi" commodity livestock farmer is at 3 X $1.2mil = $3.6. If one had to speculate, it now appears the program Caps are setup by government policy people and BTO commodity directors, so that large farms are promoted over small to mid sized farms. In other words, governments only want to deal with a few large farms.
The U.S. has a group called EWG.org that shows farm subsidies at: http://farm.ewg.org/regiondetail.php?fips=00000&summlevel=2&statename=th...
Shows U.S. subsidies are directed to only a few large corp farms and the public and some politicians aren’t happy about supporting large corp farms.
EWG.org would get a real eye opener if they were able to access freedom of information on some of the BTO payments in Ontario/Canada. We can only hope that that story never appears on the front page of the Globe and Mail. Then again, revealing some of the BTO payments, might just help ag policy for the average farmer. I further expect Better Farming and Ontario Farmer NOT to tackle the CAP issue??
RMP always was an advance on the Provincial portion of AgriStability, and, therefore, it never made any sense to pay premiums for both RMP and AgriStability, yet receive a payout from effectively only one.
Admittedly, insofar as the recent reduction in the margin trigger of AgriStability has reduced the chances of an AgriStability payout, and has, therefore, reduced the chances of a claw-back of RMP benefits, the overall $100 million RMP funding limit is setting the stage to anger a lot of crop farmers who enrolled in RMP expecting full coverage, when the 2013 benefits are announced.
What's worse is that when RMP was announced, it was widely-touted as being "bankable, stable, and predictable" - I fail to see how, as of now, it is any of those things.
Stephen Thompson, Clinton ON
As you indicate, the RMP advance on Agristability issue has been effectively neutered by the neutering of the Agristability margin trigger at 70%. Therefore no reason to link the two anymore.
As to the RMP $100million cap issue and the original $125,000 individual G&O cap vs. $1.2-$3.6 current grains, livestock hort cap issue. I am willing to bet a freedom of information request by EWG.org and a true transparency of ALL commodity numbers cross border would solve the problem in short order. Please note I said ALL commodity transparency cross border ! No reason to fear RMP $ transparency by ALL commodities is there?
There is no reason to fear RMP $ transparency by all commodities, whatever it means.
However, I do have concerns that when AgriCorp figures out who is eligible for what, at the next grains RMP calculations (supposedly this June), grain farmers who paid their RMP fees based on the expectation of a 100 cents on the dollar payout, aren't going to be happy if/when they get only a portion of that because a good whack of the RMP budget has already gone to livestock farmers.
On the other hand, however, it will be hard for grain farmers to complain if livestock farmers get to the RMP "cookie jar" before they do, because for livestock farmers, RMP has effectively been little more an ethanol injury assistance program - and, therefore, if grains farmers find themselves on the short end of the RMP "stick", they, because of their support for ethanol, aren't going to get much, if any, sympathy from livestock farmers.
Stephen Thompson, Clinton ON
Glad to hear you don't fear RMP transparency. On the Agricorp web site you can easily see the target price for grains. Now please try and do the same for Livestock and ALL other RMP commodities. The U.S. has a price insurance program for grains but not for livestock and they also have ethanol. Sorry but you got it backwards, transparency by Agricorp to show ALL RMP commodity target prices would correct the lack of money problem. I have heard the U.S. Livestock industry would be interested to see those $$#'s so, why is Agricorp so afraid to show them.
I really don't understand this seemingly-obtuse and/or pedantic argument about the need for transparency, or even what transparency is supposed to mean when it comes to RMP.
As usual, as always, it's all about the money, and transparency, therefore, means nothing - it's about "predictable" and "bankable", two terms which were once used to describe RMP, but which cannot be used to describe RMP now.
Or to look at it another way, there's nothing "backwards" about my observation that you can have all the so-called transparency in the world, but it never corrects for the lack of money.
Stephen Thompson, Clinton ON
With all due respect Stephen, there is nothing seeming-obtuse, or spurious about asking for complete transparency of calculations of any government funded program or Ministry. In fact, it has been done many times before.
If there is no fear in transparency then why is AGRICORP sharing some commodities while several commodities are not?
I guess you got told by the king of .....
When it come to programs being Timely , Bankable , Predictable and simple , it was a staement made by then Fed. Ag minister Chuck Strahl ( stall study stall as many called him ) when making an annoucement about the new renamed biting dog called Growing Forward .
As history shows livestock and fruit and veg farmers always cry for help no matter what program is in place and how good they have had it in the past . That been the one thing that has been predictable and bankable .
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