Earlier this month, Maple Leaf Meats' Michael McCain told
a Farm Products Marketing Commission hearing in Toronto
that the pork processing industry in Ontario has to
survive on one to two-per-cent margins. With those
profits, you have to wonder why Wallace McCain, Michael's
father and top dog at Maple Leaf, continues to flog pork
chops. 
The McCain gang will have to sell plenty of bacon if they
hope to make a move on Canada's richest citizen,
newspaper publisher and Hudson's Bay Co. boss Ken
Thompson, who's worth over $8 billion.
The McCain brother team, Wallace and Harrison, sits at
number seven on the Financial Post's "50 Richest
Canadians" list, with a net worth of $1.2 billion, just
$100 million behind another food magnate, Galen Weston,
who heads the George Weston Ltd. empire.
The McCains made their fortune hoeing potatoes in the
Maritimes before Wallace was ousted after a bitter feud
two years ago. It looks as if Wallace and Michael will
have to come up with some cheap pigs before the pork
business will add to their bounty.

It's been exciting times for Ontario milk promotion.
First, there was the bomb scare in Toronto's Eaton's
Centre after wires inside a mooing milk carton spooked a
shopper and caused the entire mall to be evacuated. It
wasn't until the bogus bomb was "detonated" with a stream
of water that police discovered it was actually only a
milk promotion gimmick. "If it was mooing before, it
isn't mooing now," one police officer was quoted as
saying.
Now come reports of Moo-madness in the skies. An insider
from a major milk processor reports that a commercial
airline flight was recently on the point of making an
emergency landing when wires were spotted in a mooing
carton. After examining the carton in the cockpit,
however, the pilot called it off.

It's a rude shock for country-bound city slickers who
seek the soft sounds of a pastoral retreat, only to
discover the jarring sounds of a grain dryer or 4WD
tractor instead.
Now, thanks to the wonders of modern technology, comes a
way for urbanites to savour the twitter of the birds in
the comfort of their own condos - and for farmers to make
a buck in the process.
A homesick Maritimer landlocked in Toronto says she awoke
on Christmas morning to an unusual present in her
computer download folder. A farm friend from Nova Scotia
had phoned in some farm sounds by modem. Taped with a
hand-held recorder, they were loaded onto his computer,
translated into computerese, and sent along the phone
lines to downtown Toronto.
What's next? Odeur de Holstein No. 5?