Are health authorities unnecessarily scaring the Canadian public? And are producers being left out to dry? Killer berries, killer cheese and killer mini-blinds have all garnered top billing in recent crisis-du-jour media coverage, damaging industries and alarming Canadians.

The latest involved strawberries and a parasite called cyclospora. Although Ontario's medical officer of health warned that evidence linking strawberries was preliminary, consumers heard one message: California strawberries were poison; into the garbage they went. Yet two months later, it now appears that raspberries - not strawberries - were the culprit. Maybe. Despite the best efforts of many scientists, no one really knows what landed 100 Toronto-area residents on the toilet for a week.

How can the process of risk communication be improved? Although many have criticized health authorities for warning of a link between strawberry consumption and infection with cyclospora, they did the right thing. Based on the best available science at the time, strawberries were the likely source of the cyclospora illness in Ontario. If provincial health authorities had not warned of the risk, they would be in court.

From a more theoretical basis, research has established that an early release of information sets the pace for resolution of the problem. It may also prevent similar situations elsewhere. Most importantly, people are entitled to information that affects their lives.

Such early warnings can also build long-term trust. When Johnson and Johnson was told that someone was adding poisonous cyanide to bottles of Tylenol in 1982, the company did not wait for more science. It pulled all bottles of the pain reliever from U.S. shelves and invested in research leading to tamper-proof containers. Within six months of the recall, sales had risen to new heights.

But timely messages are not enough. They must not be contradictory. When Health Canada earlier this year proposed to ban the sale of cheeses derived from raw milk, it failed to provide a compelling case for such a ban. It also ignored the cultural and social factors - the enjoyment - that leads some people to rank specific cheeses as they do fine wines.

Infection with the bacterium listeria can be life-threatening and lead to miscarriage. But while they may exist, such cases simply had not been seen in Canada. Health officials were left arguing that raw milk cheeses should be banned, even in the absence of Canadian-based scientific evidence.

Douglas Powell is an assistant professor at the University of Guelph and is working on a book, Mad Cows and Mothers' Milk, with William Leiss of Queen's University, to be published next year by McGill-Queen's University Press.

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Six-province pool too cool for some

The province's milk marketing board is ready to sign a deal to join a six-province (P6) pool. The price tag will be expensive.

Ontario dairy farmers' annual income will be cut by at least $18 million because of the deal, which will bring the cost of milk to the province's processors in line with Quebec. The price tag of about 50 cents a hectolitre could go even higher, some industry sources say, because recent developments in milk pricing haven't been taken into account in the calculation.

The $18 million loss will cost the average Ontario dairy farmer, who milks 45 cows, between $2,000 and $2,500 a year. In return, Ontario will be getting 252,000 kg of quota from Quebec, as well as a one-time payment of about $10 million in cash. Ontario producers will also pay compensation to producers in Nova Scotia, and are also lending them 31,000 kg of quota for this dairy year only.

Dairy Farmers of Ontario (DFO) leaders believe this is a good deal for the province's producers, because it will protect their markets from being undercut by other provinces where milk is priced more cheaply when interprovincial boundaries come down next year.

"I believe that we will not be able to maintain provincial boundaries," if this deal isn't made, says Peter Oosterhoff, DFO vice-chairman. The 50-cent loss on milk is the lesser of two evils, Oosterhoff says and points to British Columbia, where producers have been forced to take $3 less per hl for their milk to stave off a flood of Alberta milk. He says the same thing could happen with Quebec, which traditionally prices its milk slightly under the price in Ontario, much to the chagrin of processors here.

Signing of the deal could happen as soon as Oct. 1 and revenue sharing throughout the pool of the six eastern provinces would take place immediately, retroactive to Aug. 1. A number of issues have to dealt with as far as processors are concerned. Revenue sharing has been delayed until processors settle some outstanding issues. A major holdup has been a long-standing arbitration hearing in Quebec over milk pricing. Until Quebec sets its milk prices, Ontario can't set its prices.

But Oosterhoff denies that Ontario's milk price is being set in Quebec. The average prices for milk, weighted according to the amount of milk that was used in each category, were set by a technical committee, he says.

"To satisfy the Quebec system of negotiating prices they wanted to take this issue back home and negotiate within that two per cent flexibility. I guess it gives them the feeling that decisions are still made at the provincial level. It may have something to do with the political situation.

"We are confident that within that two per cent flexibility we will end up with figures that are acceptable to everybody," Oosterhoff says.

But all farmers aren't pleased with this deal and some want it stopped. Peter Van Sleeuwen, chairman of the Glengarry dairy committee, thinks it isn't right that "we all go to one pot and we get less." He is questioning why the agreement would be signed. Part of the reason was that Ontario wanted to be able to get excess Quebec milk production in the fall for the province's plants.

Ontario traditionally has a shortfall of production. Van Sleeuwen says it has become apparent that is not going to happen. "Quebec won't let milk come here. Ontario knows that now.

"The agreement has changed so much," he says, since it was originally conceived. "We are giving up so much."

Last fall, at the Geneva Park milk committeemen's conference, DFO chairman John Core "said he would get the best deal he could for Ontario" in the P6 agreement, Van Sleeuwen says. "Ever since, he has given in and given in."

He says there are nine outstanding items remaining that are still supposed to be dealt with before the P6 agreement is signed. "My question is why is he doing it? The agreement has changed too much. We haven't gained anything."

Dairy Farmers of Ontario chairman John Core was not available for comment in late August. He was resting at home, but was expected to return to milk board affairs after Sept. 1. Just how much support Van Sleeuwen has will likely be gauged later this month.

A producer meeting is scheduled for Glengarry Sept. 26, just days before the planned Oct. 1 signing. But before eastern Ontario producers get much of a run at the milk board, they will have to stand in line behind the processors.

Processors have strong concerns at both the national and the provincial level, industry leaders say. A meeting is planned for the week of Sept. 16 with a subcommittee of Ontario dairy leaders and a government official to try to settle a dispute over points in the agreement. The national organization has a list of 11 concerns. The provincial organization has eight concerns it wants dealt with before the agreement is signed. "We would like to see (the issues) addressed before the agreement is signed," says Ontario Dairy Council (ODC) vice-president Phyllis Tanaka. Tanaka hopes that the ODC's Tom Kane, the DFO's John Core, and the provincial Farm Products Marketing Commission's David Alles can come to a resolution before the next all-milk pooling meeting Sept. 19.

"We are trying to take some leadership with these issues and seek some resolution and take that input to the all-milk pooling meeting," she says.

"Producers are just going along their merry way, doing their own thing," complains Kempton Matte, president, National Dairy Council. He has been prodding the provincial processor organizations to ask their producers for changes. "It's one of the ironies," Matte says. "All we can do about it is inform people so that the provincial processor bodies have an opportunity to speak with the producers. At the moment, they don't have any influence at all."

The biggest processor concern is about the allocation system. But Matte is also pushing for the processors to have the right to vote at the Canadian Milk Supply Management Committee, which advises the Canadian Dairy Commission about price increases for milk.

Processors sit in on milk-supply management committee meetings, but don't have a vote. Matte is also pushing for the allocation system to remain provincial, essentially gutting the planned pool.

His organization is also calling for a review of most aspects of the pool's plan, as well as the methods used to determine the weighted average prices for milk sold to the pool for each province.

Oosterhoff shrugs his shoulders and says that "I find it a little hard to read where they are coming from." He says both national and provincial organizations were involved in a 1990 task force which recommended special class pricing and all-milk pooling. "They've been part of the negotiations," he says, and points out that ODC president Tom Kane was one of the negotiators of the P6 deal.

"I believe that he has kept his members fully apprised of the developments," Oosterhoff says, and puts processor discontent down to "paranoia."

He says that the price differences between the provinces "are not as onerous as the processors would like you to believe." Processors in Quebec pay more for butterfat than in Ontario. "When you look at the whole package, discrepancies are not as great."

Other board members are confident that the agreement will come together in the end.

Gordon Coukell, Stayner, says the P6 negotiating group will meet again between Sept. 15 and 22 to see if everything has been put in place.

Coukell says he knew that producers would lose some income when the P6 came in, but won't confirm the $18 million figure. "I have no knowledge of that figure at all and its premature to have that out there.

"There's some dollar loss and that is offset by more stability in having a larger pool and there will be some gain in the fact that some of our skimoff will be shared in the whole pool rather than just being a provincial situation."

John Nooyen, chairman of the Russell county milk committee, says he is against the deal if producers are going to lose $18 million. "There's been a lot of backroom dealing. We'll probably never know the full story," he says.

Still, he remains faithful to the DFO chairman. "We've put our faith in John Core. That's why we elected him." But he doesn't think Ontario should have given money to Nova Scotia so far in advance.

Coukell defends the deal that was made, including the $10-million payment to Ontario from Quebec. "The Quebec producers gain because they end up sharing in our larger market and that's why there was a compensation package put together at the start. The Quebec producers are contributing to the compensation package which will come to Ontario. "Rightly or wrongly, it was felt that in three years provincial boundaries wouldn't be as strict as they had been in the past." He points to the provincial agriculture ministers' desire to reduce inter-provincial barriers, and again raises the fear that cheaper Quebec milk would flood into Ontario.

He rejects Van Sleeuwen's predictions that as much as one per cent of Ontario's quota would be bought by Quebec farmers annually in a shared quota exchange.

"We have no knowledge of that, quite frankly. It's similar, I think to some concerns we had when we started the quota exchange in this province. I can remember producers in western Ontario saying that 'If we go into this, why, all our quota is going to move to eastern Ontario?' And that didn't happen. We experienced the same kind of comments a few years ago when we brought northern Ontario in."

And industry insiders say that some processor demands, such as proof of revenue neutrality in the total pool by each class of milk, will be impossible because some new classes are being created.

Oosterhoff says the Plan C option is still there, but processors aren't using it.

Van Sleeuwen disagrees with that, and is also critical of demands that have been made by the Quebec government. And he's upset about a Quebec Order In Council he obtained. It states that "this agreement (the p6) enables Quebec to further its share of the national quota and its access to the Canadian market."

Lorraine Lapointe, Martintown, director for Glengarry and Stormont, says "I'm surprised that all these conditions are attached. We the (DFO board) have not even discussed it."

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Renting opens doors for young farmers

By DON STONEMAN

Walter and Val Miller are proof that a young farming couple can start up with minimal investment, other than livestock and quota worth nearly $16,000 a milking cow.

Five years ago the Millers made the jump from part-time freezer beef farmers to full-time dairying without buying a barn or an acre of land. And they will likely be debt-free in another five years. Furthermore, they have developed one of the top Holstein breeding herds in Prince Edward county.

But Walter Miller warns it isn't easy. For a while they shunted from one landlord's facilities to another. Lenders, uneasy backing farmers who don't own facilities they can offer up as security, demand a rapid payback. And the tax man takes a big cut. Revenue Canada exacts a high price from farmers who can't write off part of their income as depreciation on machinery and buildings.

Producers who are going to lease production facilities face two questions constantly, Miller says: How much should they invest in facilities they don't own? And how to avoid the bottleneck in income that occurs a few years into the business plan?

"Other than that, I can recommend it to a lot of people," Miller says.

Walter Miller started raising freezer beef in a rented barn when he graduated from the University of Guelph in 1982, after majoring in animal science and minoring in agricultural business. Indifferent beef prices encouraged him to look into dairying. In January, 1988, he and Val started milking 10 heifers on a leased farm with a single milking pail, pipeline and used vacuum pump. By the end of that year, the farm was sold and they were working with a new landlord. They stayed on until 1991.

They had to take out a private loan to buy quota to make the operation go. The banks weren't eager to lend, Walter Miller says, since they lacked the equity to make the lender happy. It was the fall of 1991 when the Millers started farming at South Bay. Joe McAlpine needed a hired hand, as he'd already quit milking cows and sold his quota on the exchange, but still had the dairy cattle.

The Millers sought financial advice, and got it, from former Ontario agriculture minister adviser Larry Carlaw. "He's been like a third father," says Val. The Millers were able to work out an arrangement with McAlpine. They still needed a mortgage so they got help from their parents, who signed their property to back them up at the bank.

The Millers signed a five year agreement with McAlpine and bought his herd and rent the barn and milking facilities from him. McAlpine grows the crops to feed the Millers' cows and replacements under contract.

"I think Joe and I work well together in this routine," Miller says.

"He provides me with X number of tonnes of each product that I need." And manure goes on his fields at no cost. McAlpine provides the tractor and loader for manure cleaning, and helps move cattle, while Walter helps him with tractor work. The land consistently grows good crops.

"He came up with a market value. We ran it through our cash flow, and figured it was fair," Walter Miller says. There was spirited dickering on the price of McAlpine's 32 cows. It's cows that are Walter Miller's love, and careful management makes the most of outdated facilities.

The Millers now milk 46, including their previously owned stock. They mixed the cattle up, culling and improving as they went. The concentration on cattle has paid off. In the first year their herd BCA was 180-181 and ranked 10th. The next year it was 230 and ranked number two.

Facing over-quota production, they culled from the bottom and zoomed to the top of the county's DHI herds in 1993, 194 and 1995, with a composite of 233. This summer the rolling BCA was 245. Walter Miller says their number one goal is to have "nice production-type cows bred to top bulls, and a few test sires. "We were never sure we would be around one year to the next." Walter says most breeding is Canadian genetics, but he admits he "dabbled" a little with American sires.

Walter now has the time to show cattle locally. There are a couple of drawbacks, Walter says. One is that there is only a five-year lease, so there is risk in making expensive changes to the barn that would increase productivity.

Stalls are small, and that is likely the biggest liability of the operation. There is a bulk tank and a TMR mixer, but Walter stresses that "everything we do is movable." "You have to double-think everything," Val adds.

Mid-way through the business plan, cash is tight. There is nothing for the Farm Credit Corporation to hold as security, so they must pay off the loan fast. At the same time, they are squeezed between the bank loan and the tax man, who sees the operation with almost no depreciation as very profitable. And every bit of principle that is paid off, Revenue Canada sees as income. "So it's tight," Walter admits. "It's a bottleneck. "If you want to start from scratch, you need principal and quota. We've proven we can do it." The operation's future "depends on how financially innovative we can be from here on in."

The Millers work closely with vets and Purina on feeding cows. Dr. Dave Green at the Picton Animal Hospital is the herd-health vet. The Millers use Ontario DHI's Herd Monitor report every month and are on supervised test. The report lets them know at a glance which animals are producing milk. "If you look at your profitability column, those are your more profitable cows," Walter says.

He has priced comfort stalls and figures that 14 stalls would cost $5,000 to lengthen and raise the mangers. But spending extra time in the barn makes up for a lack of cow comfort, he believes. Big cows and small ones are put side by side to make up for the small stalls. There is lots of bedding.

But the stalls are still only 48 inches wide "and we can't afford to lose a stall" by renovating the barn, he says. In the Miller herd, 90 per cent of the cows are classified as Good Plus, or better. And 80 per cent are the Millers' prefix Ourown.

The name "brought quite a few laughs" from people who know their situation, Walter says.

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A peek inside New York dairy cows

CORTLAND, NEW YORK-At a time when dairy farmers are looking for the cheapest possible feed sources, Joanne Siciliano is putting her money where her cow's mouth is.

A Syracuse, New York-based dairy nutrition consultant, Siciliano is testing alternative feed stuffs by putting the feed into cannulated cows on a commercial dairy farm, and then measuring the feed value of the product that comes out. A cannulated cow has a door surgically installed in its side so that feed products can be put directly into its rumen. A dacron bag lets the rumen juices at the feed, but its contents stay inside the bag. Testing the percentage of bypass protein before and after the sample is put in the cow determines how much is degraded by the rumen in 24 hours.

Siciliano tests alternative feedstuffs for farmers. For example, she is testing the feed value of brewer's grains on the commercial dairy farm managed by Mike McMahon, near Cortland, New York. Finding the digestibility of feeds is a growing segment as farmers look for more cost-effective rations.

Siciliano hangs brewer's grains in a dacron bag in the cow's rumen for 24 hours. She is looking at the bypass protein in the brewer's to see if there is much difference between the day it arrives on the farm and the last day that it is used. She has determined that, in the summertime, brewer's should be used in three days, to keep it fresh.

She is also evaluating the feed value of corn silage for small seed companies.

Last year, she tested 200 hybrids and she is testing more this year. In the northeast U.S., 75 to 80 per cent of seed corn is planted specifically to make corn silage.

"This is just a buzzing area for anyone who sells corn in the northeast," Siciliano says. "There are a number of smaller companies that don't have the wherewithal that Pioneer and Cargill do."

She looks at feed value and digestibility. Dairy cattle and beef cattle don't deal with feed in the same way, Siciliano says. The rate of passage of feed is very different in beef cattle than in dairy cattle. "So you get very different numbers," she says.

As well, there is a lot of difference between hybrids in terms of digestibility, depending on how finely the sample is chopped. Some hybrids stand out in terms of digestibility when they are left coarsely chopped.

It isn't science as a university would want to do it, Siciliano says, but on-farm sample testing "has been very interesting."

This type of testing works best on a large farm with bunker silos, she says. "With a bunk, you get a good cross section of what is happening," she says. The McMahon operation, where she keeps the cannulated cows, fits the bill. It is run by three brothers who milk 450 cows.

Siciliano uses the Cornell nutrition model, a high-tech computer program. She explains that the Cornell model, which looks at how fast each feed is digested, has found favour with nutritionists across the U.S. and Canada.

The Cornell model discounts feeds based on the speed of digestion and accounts for the amount eaten. A cow that eats 130 pounds of dry matter a day, for example, has to deal with feed faster than a cow eating 75 pounds a day.

Last year's corn silage proved to be a challenge. Feed consultants were generally frustrated because the Cornell model predicted that a particular diet would allow for the production of 100 pounds of milk a day. But cows were only producing 85 or 90 pounds.

Even well-managed farms, where feeding wasn't an issue, found that cows fed on new corn silage were dropping production for no apparent reason.

Regular testing indicated the silage was high in energy. Siciliano, through her cannulated cow testing, found that the fibre in silage was indigestible. The normal digestibility is about four per cent. She says she found samples that were only one-tenth as digestible as normal.

Some farmers found the answer was to change the allocation of silage in the ration. They found that hay fibre digestion was good, so they took corn silage out of the diet, replacing it with more haylage and ground corn, both of which are readily available to the cow. "It's expensive, but it more than paid for itself with high milk prices," Siciliano says. -DS

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New program puts dairy on a disc

By DON STONEMAN

A popular, computerized dairy-herd monitoring program from Western Canada is gradually finding friends in Ontario.

Called VAMPP, short for Veterinary Automated Management and Production control Program, it's a dairy-herd management and record keeping computer program designed for Canadian dairy farms. VAMPP handles reproduction, health, mastitis and production records, records body condition of cows, heifer growth, genetics and classifications, vaccinations, and even embryo transfers.

"It's not just lists or organizing data, it is analyzing data," says Liz Vander Wekken, product-support manager. There are 500 systems installed on farms, mostly in Western Canada. But there are 50 systems in Ontario with a steady growth in this province, says Vander Wekken.

VAMPP provides lists of animals that need attention, individual records for all animals, summary reports on production on everything from production to culling, and inventory, as well as a paper trail for breeding, applications for animal registry, DHI lists, vet checks, input of actual cost for disease, treatments and feed.

Furthermore, it links directly to Surge Parlor Manager and Universal's Nedap milking equipment. VAMPP can be installed in any computer with IBM DOS version four or higher, with six megabytes of hard drive space. Vander Wekken says she has 300-cow herds on a 286 computer. "It is slow. I would not recommend it. I prefer a 486."

Vander Wekken says the program is based on a system by the same name developed in Holland. The program is unique because farmers in Alberta, British Columbia and Ontario enter information in the same way. A farmer on the system can compare performance of cows in his operation with the average of other farms in other provinces on the same system. With that information, farmers can tell if their incidence of displaced abomasums, for example, is in line with other farms. It's a one-time data entry system that will take care of everything, reorganizing the information for the producer so that he or she can make the decisions necessary to run the farm, says Vander Wekken.

"Our goal is to provide producers with a system that collects data, recalls it and provides breeding slips."

It is also possible to do co-operative work between herds, and to put an economic value on the parameters that have been set out. To do co-operative work, producers need a standard base coding and VAMPP does that, she says.

She says that a University of Guelph student is using the VAMPP system to study the impact of diseases on the performance of cattle. "With this information, we hope to get to some economic weighting of diseases, as well as possibly linking diseases to genetic traits of animals."

Ontario DHI has shown some interest in the system, Vander Wekken says. "DHI gets all the information it needs and wants and more from VAMPP" because the system uses the Canadian DHI industry codes.

Besides, there is more validity in the data, with a single entry system. "The less times we have to enter it, the less errors we get."

VAMPP brings genetic records, milk production, service information, vet and health information and puts it all into one package for between $895 and $1,295. A range of options are available such as the embryo transfer module, enhanced pedigree module and graphics.

Herds with more than 40 cows can definitely benefit from its pedigree perspective. The VAMPP pedigree system is very much like the Holstein Canada recording system. "With this information you can market animals very well," she says. From a commercial stand point, "It will really assist you in making better management decisions."