The American beef industry is facing a furious attack in the courts and the media as animal rights and anti-technology groups exploit fears about mad cow disease. So far, there doesn't seem to be any effect on beef demand here in Ontario. The attack on the beef industry started shortly after the mad cow disease issue blew up in Britain March 20.n Late March, a Jeremy Rifkin-sponsored organization, International Centre For Technology Assessment (ICTA), a Washington-based non-profit organization-filed a legal petition against the United States Food and Drug Administration and the department of agriculture demanding that they immediately ban feeding of ruminant by-products in livestock feeds.
n Mid-April, former rancher and National Farmers Union lobbyist Howard Lyman, who led Rifkin's Beyond Beef campaign, bested a National Cattlemen's Beef Association representative in a debate about feeding animal by-products to cattle on a particularly controversial Oprah Winfrey daytime talk show. Futures prices in Chicago fell the next day on the expectation of declining beef demand.
n Late April, an animal rights organization, Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine, called on the federal government to ban all animal by-product feeding and take meat off the list of recommended foods in the U.S.
The players in the attacks on by-product feeding are long-time critics of modern agriculture. Rifkin led the fight against Bovine Somatotropin (BST) in the U.S. His book, Beyond Beef: the Rise and Fall of the Cattle Culture, criticizes the industry and calls for a dramatic decrease in beef consumption to save the environment.
Rifkin is "an anti-technology advocate," says Jean Szkotnicki, executive director of the Guelph-based Canadian Animal Health Institute. She is familiar with him as director of the U.S.-based Foundation for Economic Trends because of his strident criticism of BST use in the dairy industry.
Rifkin's organization was involved in the boycott of beef at McDonald's restaurants in 1993 and deplores the North American beef raising industry in general.
Joseph Mendelson, legal director for the ICTA, who drew up the petition, says it is a continuation of work that he and ICTA director Andrew Kimbrell were involved in at the Foundation for Economic Trends. "They are involved in other issues now," he says.
He says the ICTA will likely give the U.S. government another month to draw up regulations to ban ruminant by-product feeding before launching a lawsuit in U.S. District Court, either in Washington or in a dairy or beef-producing state. American beef producers were furious with the Oprah Winfrey presentation of their industry and charged that their spokesman, the National Cattlemen Beef Association's Dr. Gary Weber, had been widely edited out of the taped show when it was aired.
A furious fax and telephone campaign ensued and a week later, in a live show, Weber got five minutes to present his views again. This time the NCBA was pleased with the result. The Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine made its vegetarian agenda clear at a press conference it staged in Washington when its representatives charged that meat and dairy products are an unnecessary and harmful part of the human diet, reporters were told.
Helen Bishop-Macdonald, a nutrition adviser for Dairy Farmers of Canada, has debated with a representative of the physicians committee. At the Ontario Farm Animal Council meeting in Guelph last month she was scathing in her comments about the organization which she describes as being less than responsible in their views about nutrition and made up mostly of members other than physicians.
Graeme Hedley, Ontario Cattlemen's Association executive vice-president, says that retailers have seen no decline in beef consumption that can be attributed to consumers' health concerns.
"In their [consumers] view, the biggest factor depressing the normal surge in demand is the weather." People aren't going outside to use their barbecues, Hedley says.
Cash beef prices tumbled the week of the first Oprah Winfrey show, but he thinks it is likely linked to sharply rising corn prices. "Is there a connection? That is the wildest of speculations," he told Farm & Country.
For the Oprah Winfrey show to have caused that, "You would have to assume that there was a consumer reaction that fed back through retail demand. That just doesn't happen in one day."
In the view of market watchers, Hedley said, volatility in the grain market has carried over into the cattle market. The price of a bushel of corn rose $1 in 10 days. It did create some new panic situations in mid-April, Hedley said, confirming that "some cattle were being dumped....Kill levels were up in mid-April."
OSI enters the AI fray
What route will Ontario Swine Improvement (OSI) take when it moves into a proposed genetics company? Its new managing director, Fred Hays, plans on turning the mothballed OSI test barns in New Dundee into a large AI centre when the old Woodstock unit is closed.Further, he told Farm & Country, in two months it would offer farmers semen from a large pool, perhaps supplied by British, European and American AI groupings. However, there are already five private Ontario AI companies, all owned by breeders or breeder groups. Where does his OSI fit in?
While Arnold Ypma, who owns Shade Oak Swine Ltd. and its AI spin-off, says he has no objections to another competitor, should OSI be spending "money on bricks and mortar on this venture?" Certainly it cannot get special funding, and he questions the reliability of a recent Price Waterhouse report that advises this venture.
That report projects a 15-per-cent business increase over the next three years from today's $685,000 revenue base. This translates into a gross of $1.95 million.
"Here we have a three-fold revenue jump but actual sales rise of only 50 per cent," Ypma says. "Things don't add up." Noting that competition must increase sharply, he adds there are now 800 services a day. So to achieve projected service levels, charges must be set at $18 a straw.
"The money's not out there to charge this sort of level," he adds. On the other hand, a central AI unit offers genetic diversity. "This sort of thing is needed...but how it's run is another question."
Bob Robinson, co-owner of Vista Villa with his son, Scott, says that OSI should aim at an Ontario or national program. "The real need is for access to a genetic bank at the least possible cost."
Oxford Hybrid's Murray Junker preferred a Canada-wide approach. Ontario now tests 25,000 animals a year but across the country this becomes 75,000. Kent county's Peter John Haren adds that to any potential buyer "a figure of 75,000 under test is really impressive...and it is."
A future program must have a data set based on genetics and carcass cutouts, a major departure from past programs. It should also include heritability factors, stresses Thames Bend Farms' Warren Stein. He insists it must embrace new data from the industry's carcass assessment project. Any successful program must be large enough to meet the industry's longer term needs.
Jim Hunter, general manager of Quality Swine Co-op, notes that backfat and lean criteria are no longer acceptable on their own. New calculations have to include meat colour and its texture. And Stein adds that OSI has to accept that modern genetic demands have become the central issue. "To get our feelings on this, it should call a meeting, open to all breeders, and there must be no more secrecy....Everything's got to be in the open...and we've got to help make the decisions."
Ypma not only gives this proposal firm support but suggests OSI must convene regular breeders' meetings. OSI president Scott Robinson suggests at least three meetings a year. Atwood breeder Georgina Anderson adds that nothing should be left to good intentions. "Let's make it spring, fall and winter...and all meetings must be open."
Bob Robson, general manager of Shur-Gain's commercial and feed research enterprise, stresses that OSI must improve its image. "Some pork board directors feel that OSI is something of a fat cat...and that's got to be changed. It must serve the entire industry...not a particular segment." - JP
Getting their feet wet with pigs
By JOHN PHILLIPS
When the North American Free Trade Agreement was signed three years ago, a number of farmers within supply management programs took a hard look at the future.Some, such as the Gillans in Lanark county and the Reinharts in Bruce county, felt they needed a second string to their bows. With fond memories of raising hogs before specializing in milk and grain production, they felt diversification would give income protection in the event of a future with lower milk prices.
Neither family made a major plunge. Mason and Joan Gillan, married only 10 years, had little cash stashed away and the farm debt on their 500-acre, 100-cow operation was still formidable. So any move would have to be limited. Joan says they now have 150 feeder pigs in a barn, far short of the 600 before their parents divided the property with a brother, but still enough to rekindle keen interest in the hog world.
Mason says house guests from Northern Ireland last year brought their thinking into sharp focus. The profitable Irish operation calls for low housing costs, along with large batches from all-in, all-out areas. Four-foot-high walls surround traditional barn areas, each hosed down and sanitized once animals are marketed, and feed is bought in large quantities to secure volume discounts. Getting weaners from one clean minimal-disease source also is important.
He draws parallels between Irish and Canadian approaches. His friends were propelled into their major face-lift when Britain joined the European Union. To survive, they had to match the efficiencies found in most Dutch and Danish herds.
Ontario pig farmers, on the other hand, must meet keen competition from the huge U.S. food corporations, whether Smith-field, Tyson or Premium Standard Farms (PSF).
Meanwhile, Mason's father, Art Gillan, smiles at the prospect of the family again becoming serious about pig production. He campaigned vigourously for the hog marketing board during the 1950s, along with Alva Rintoul of Carleton Place, Joan's grandfather. Art feels that with pork producers now having a strong say in how their animals are sold, the industry offers bright long-term prospects.
He also notes that farming seems to be going the full circle: back to mixed enterprises.
Bruce county's Paul and Nancy Reinhart also feel they need an insurance policy against future dairy industry uncertainty. A year ago, they bought another 100-acre farm with a 16-year-old hog barn. Essentially, the sandwich-wall unit was in good shape. Perth builder Fred Groenestege installed a new Agco programmed fan system in which air is drawn from outside, and mixed with propane-heated air as needed.
Nancy notes that temperature and air flow play a crucial role in any barn, something learned at pig seminars they both attended.
An area supplier provided 450 minimal disease, SEW one-source weaners. When final calculations were made, the cost was $72.16 an animal. Conceding he was inexperienced in new-style hog production, Paul felt the price was "more than enough". At the same time, he is the first to agree that top-notch healthy pigs should carry premiums.
Curiously, the SEW animals were far from uniform in size. They ranged from 40 to 100 pounds in weight, a spread of 60 pounds.
Moreover, he adds, growth rates were erratic. When the first batch was shipped at 230 pounds, some of the pigs remaining in the pens weighed only 120 pounds.
Those figures were then compared with subsequent deliveries, in this case with Quality Swine Co-operative (QS) weaners coming from 16 different minimal-disease producers. He and Nancy monitored two pens in each batch and, while some of the SEW animals came in with impressive finishing figures, others were at the bottom of the heap.
The QS pigs, at a feed cost of $46.30, gave a $25 a pig edge over the SEW, with multi-source averaging 557 pounds of feed per pig from an average of 60 pounds to 235. Even drug costs were lower with the QS animals. When both groups were averaged, they finished in four months, but the QS needed fewer input costs, Paul says.
So where do the Reinharts go from here? First, their 30-cow herd of milking Ayrshires remains the farm's backbone. Second, they likely will expand to a finishing group of 1,000 market animals. But not for the time being. Paul and Nancy look at the $5.50 corn prices and figure there is a much plumper bottom line with selling cash crops than pumping up output to several thousand hogs a year.
"We can use the profit to grow more pigs in the future," Nancy says. "A 1,000-head barn doesn't come cheaply." On the other hand, she and Paul are convinced that pigs and dairy cows make a great combination. So, until corn prices drop sharply, they will mothball their barn and focus on their Ayrshires and cash crops to secure the best bottom line.