Glacier FarmMedia reporters and contributors from Ontario, Quebec, Alberta and Manitoba asked farmers about their election priorities, how represented by the federal government they’ve felt — and finally, if there’s anything they’d like farmers from other regions to understand about the issues they face.

In part four, farmers reflect on what they’d like farmers from other regions to understand about the issues they face.

Read part one, part two and part three.

For more election coverage, visit the Western Producer’s election page.

Ontario

Dairy farmer Davina Garner would prefer if there was a better understanding of the different pressures faced by farmers in the East versus the West. As the organizer of an all-candidates’ meeting on behalf of the Oxford County Federation of Agriculture, she believes there’s a wider range of farms in Ontario than on the Prairies.

“Plus I think we tend to be more limited here by red tape if we want to expand,” Garner added.

Garner’s biggest concern during the campaign is whether the parties’ efforts to tackle the perceived housing crisis will accelerate the loss of prime agricultural land in the province.

Pete Overdevest said it’s unfortunate that the news and culture of Toronto is often what Western farmers hear when it’s a completely different reality in Ontario’s farm country.

Matt Underwood suggested western farmers might benefit from knowing that most of their Ontario counterparts live in ridings that have stayed blue for several elections.

Alberta

Phil Constantin said producers across the country can all agree on many concerns in the industry.

“I think at one time or another we all face each other’s problems. We’re all facing droughts, we’re all facing floods. But I think the biggest thing is when we have a swing this big on pricing,” he said.

Constantin said the lack of competition in grains pricing is damning to the industry.

“We don’t have enough competition in the grain market at all.… We’ve lost Viterra to Bunge, so what do we have for competition? We used to have the Canadian Wheat Board, and we had farmers running it at the end and doing a great job, but they shut us down. Then they took all our assets and sold it to G3.”

Bryan Perkins sees Alberta agriculture as an export-first economy as opposed to other regions that can rely more on domestic consumption. In a global trade war, that is a worry.

“Our Western Canadian agriculture is very much oriented to export kinds of commodities. Certainly we use our products here in Canada, but a lot of the products — whether it be livestock or grains or oilseeds — are heavily exported,” he said.

“We have to be concerned about the supply managed sector having undue influence on trade negotiations,” he added. “I think it can be framed in a way, certainly, that makes it possible to still have that kind of program in place, but yet there needs to be respect for those of us who … are very much oriented to the export markets.”

Manitoba

Grain and oilseed farmer Curtis McCrae said he has a neighbor from Ontario who still farms in that province. Their priorities are very similar.

“We think a lot alike,” he said.

Manitoba is much more export-oriented than Ontario, he noted. Farmers there might not understand how crucial infrastructure like ports and railways are to producers in the West, and the magnitude of threats posed by strikes.

Quebec

No answer provided.

The post ‘Don’t equate us with Toronto news, culture’ Ontario farmers tell western colleagues appeared first on Alberta Farmer Express.

Glacier FarmMedia reporters and contributors from Ontario, Quebec, Alberta and Manitoba asked farmers about their election priorities, how represented by the federal government they’ve felt — and finally, if there’s anything they’d like farmers from other regions to understand about the issues they face.

In part three of this series, farmers answer the question, “Do you feel represented by the federal government?”

Read part one and part two of the series, which look at farmers’ views on U.S. President Donald Trump, trade, the economy, and what the federal government can do to build a better business environment.

For more coverage of the 2025 federal election, visit the Western Producer’s election page.

Ontario

Ontario farmers Glacier FarmMedia spoke to felt generally well represented by their MPs. In all cases, those were Conservative MPs elected in ridings where agriculture is a significant economic driver.

“From Ottawa as a whole, though, I don’t feel the current government provides as much support as I would like to see for grain farmers across the country,” said Matt Underwood.

Brayden Older, a dairy farmer near Embro, says he “feel(s) like we’re rudderless right now.” He criticized former Prime Minister Justin Trudeau for proroguing Parliament immediately upon announcing his intention to step down as Liberal leader. He also mused about the possibility that the nation could — if Pierre Poilievre’s Conservatives win the election — potentially be led by three different prime ministers within a few months.

Pete Overdevest, who is on the Dairy Farmers of Ontario board, says the ruling Liberals made campaign promises in the past but failed to follow through once elected. He expects little better this time.

Overdevest and fellow dairy farmer Braydon Older shared the concern that if the Liberals secure a third successive victory the alienation due to lack of representation for farmers — particularly Prairie farmers — in Ottawa will rise to troubling levels.

Older wants to hear assurances from party leaders this campaign that supply management will be protected in any trade negotiations. But he admitted he worries that putting too much emphasis on poultry, eggs and dairy could leave voters in Western Canadian farm country feeling left out.

“We need to be united over the whole country,” agreed Overdevest.

Quebec

“The strongest element of a society is also its weakest link: its farmers,” said fruit producer and Bloc Québécois candidate Christian Hébert. His comments are translated from French.

“We can’t just pick up tomorrow and go. So, if farmers’ concerns are not prioritized in public policy, then we’ll be the first ones sacrificed. I find this very sad.”

Hébert said Quebecers unanimously support reciprocal norms — that is, that imported products sold in Québec must be subject to the same standards and requirements as Québec products.

“The federal government is not playing an adequate role in terms of control over products coming through the border,” he said.

Hébert said in recent years there have been several demonstrations in Quebec, other provinces and the U.S. about reciprocal norms.

Manitoba

Curtis McCrae said his biggest fear is that eastern voters will forget what has happened in the last ten years.

“We haven’t been represented as part of the country. We’ve just been where everything gets pushed to solve problems,” he said.

He said he’d love to see a government that understands the importance of primary industry, and the growth it can spur in the rest of the economy.

Scott Peters, who sits on the Canadian Pork Council, said representation has been okay at times. It can be difficult to get meetings with officials, but he understands they are very busy.

However, he said AgriStability has been toyed with too much, and programs have been cut — possibly because agriculture is poorly understood or forgotten.

Alberta

Hog and grain farmer Bryan Perkins said agriculture seems to get lost in the mix, while tariffs on other industries receive all the attention from the federal government.

“They’re spending a lot of time working on and being worried about tariffs and whatnot, but we’re here with 100 per cent tariffs on canola oil and canola meal and 25 per cent tariffs on pork going to China, and there just doesn’t seem to be a whisper on that,” he said.

“Yet, when there’s a 25 per cent tariff on automobiles or steel and aluminum — and those are all really important industries, for sure — all of a sudden there’s lots of government attention,” Perkins said.

China placed tariffs on agricultural products in retaliation for those Canada placed on electric vehicles, he said.

The post Canadian farmers’ view of the federal government differs by province — but not by much appeared first on Alberta Farmer Express.

Glacier FarmMedia reporters and contributors from Ontario, Quebec, Alberta and Manitoba asked farmers about their election priorities, how represented by the federal government they’ve felt — and finally, if there’s anything they’d like farmers from other regions to understand about the issues they face.

In part two, farmers air their concerns about trade and the Canadian economy, and what the federal government should do to promote a better business environment. Read part one to see their thoughts on U.S. President Donald Trump and tariffs.

For more coverage of the 2025 federal elections, visit the Western Producer’s elections page.

Ontario

Crop farmer Matt Underwood is optimistic during this election that there’s a chance to overturn “the status quo” in Ottawa and begin promoting Canadian agriculture at home and abroad.

“There’s a lot of opportunity for our government to support farmers more,” he said. Examples could include a carbon tax exemption for businesses that dry grains and efforts on a global scale to facilitate export of Canadian farm products outside North American.

Oxford dairy farmers Pete Overdevest and Davina Garner want to see less red tape for farm construction and/or expansion.

Quebec

Fruit producer and Bloc Québécois candidate Christian Hébert said there’s a lack of support for small and mid-sized farms both at the provincial and federal level. His comments are translated from French.

“Support programs are abandoning this section of the industry,” he said. “The majority of farms in Québec and Canada are approaching this critical zone: they are no longer a small farm, but they are not a large enterprise either. Insurance and financing programs are not designed for them and innovation support programs don’t work.”

The sector also needs to look into the future and think about how climate change will affect crop production methods and insurance programs, he added.

Alberta

Grain grower Phil Constantin said programs like AgriInvest must be improved to help farmers keep their operations strong in today’s shifting global market.

“I don’t really want to be subsidized, but when this kind of stuff comes up, we need some kind of safeguard to help us out and maintain things,” he said. “They call it AgriInvest, but it doesn’t really work. I mean, you’ve got to qualify for it, and even if you do, you don’t see money until years down the road.”

Hog and grain farmer Bryan Perkins spoke about issues he sees in the world of the agriculture business and how the global marketplace is changing the way Canadian farmers do business.

“The uncertainties in the marketplace that are there, whether it be Chinese tariffs or the potential trade disruptions that might occur along the way from that, they’re causing turmoil as well,” Perkins said.

“The machinery we buy or the various inputs that we buy are all affected by this turmoil in world trade.”

Manitoba

BRM programs need to be improved, said hog farmer Scott Peters. “There are things that are happening, but it’s all within the same structure, and I think some of the structure is outdated and for sure not responsive enough.”

He noted that rural crime is an issue for hog producers. Peters said his barns have been broken into several times.

Peters also noted he’d like to see the federal government promote domestic processing and manufacturing.

Crop farmer Curtis McCrae said that government restrictions like the price on carbon and tier four emissions on machinery have made the economy weak.

“Hopefully the next government that gets in understands that we need to unleash our economic power,” McCrae said.

Egg farmer Harley Siemens said he’d like to see federal red tape reduced. He also said poultry farmers need better insurance against avian influenza outbreaks, noting the CFIA’s per-head payment hasn’t been updated in many years.

The post Canadian farmers reveal concerns ahead of federal election | Part 2 appeared first on Alberta Farmer Express.

Canadians often lose sight of how big their country is — unless, for example, they get to rub shoulders with Europeans who are staggered by the time it takes to drive across a single province.

Canada is big — and with that comes the challenges of bridging different geographies and climate zones, regional cultures, languages, resources and economic needs.

Glacier FarmMedia reporters and contributors from Ontario, Quebec, Alberta and Manitoba asked farmers about their election priorities, how represented by the federal government they’ve felt — and finally, if there’s anything they’d like farmers from other regions to understand about the issues they face.

Here is what they said about trade tensions with the U.S.

For more coverage of the 2025 federal election, visit the Western Producer’s elections tab.

Ontario

Although the tariffs might not always be top-of-mind for Ontario farmers as they contemplate the April 28 vote, it’s never far from the top of the list.

“We’ve got a bully right now. And he’s got (Canadian supply-managed agriculture) in his sights,” said Embro area dairy producer Braydon Older. “[Donald Trump is] obsessed with it, and I don’t know how that can work out good for us.”

“It just seems that one day Trump can wake up in a good mood and lay off the tariffs and then the next day wake up on the wrong side of the bed and say ‘let’s tariff everyone’,” said crop farmer Matt Underwood from the Wingham area.

Underwood said the federal government should be softening the blow of tariff uncertainty by promoting Canadian farm products more globally.

“We need to make sure we’re open to working with more buyers,” he said. “That’s both for Ontario and for the West. We really need to be highlighting what Canadian farmers have to offer to the world.”

Quebec

Christian Hébert is an apple and raspberry producer near Deschambault-Grondines, west of Québec City. He’s also a Bloc Québécois candidate for the riding of Portneuf-Jacques Cartier. His comments have been translated from French.

He said the pandemic, climate change and now economic war with the United States have compounded the burdens on farms.

“The economic burden is so astronomic that youth consider themselves as the lost, or forgotten, generation,” he said. “I don’t want to be alarmist, but we’ve been experiencing this for the past forty years, and by “this” I mean the decline of agriculture.”

This year he’s seeing even more farms going out of business — some choosing to leave despite still being profitable, due to stress and exhaustion.

Alberta

Bryan Perkins owns a mixed pig and grain farm operation in the municipal district of Wainwright in east-central Alberta. Perkins said the on-again, off-again rollercoaster of U.S. tariffs is putting a strain on the industry and supports from the government may not be timely enough to help farmers who face hardships due to the trade war.

“There were indications by our current government that they want to do something through AgriStability, but the impact of that is well down the road,” Perkins said. “If there are benefits that might come from that, it’s months or years down the road. And we have issues now that are really affecting us at this point in time.”

Phil Constantin is a grain grower in Sturgeon County north of Edmonton. He said that although the U.S. tariff situation is harmful to the Canadian agriculture industry, he believes that President Trump is only standing up for his country.

“We do need to address this free trade agreement. These tariffs are doing nothing but hurting everybody,” Constantin said.

“And I know everybody is complaining about Trump, but I mean, the guy is looking out for his country. We need somebody like that for this country.”

Manitoba

Tariffs were the top concern for Scott Peters, a hog farmer near Steinbach in southeastern Manitoba.

“At any time it could change, so we have to be ready for anything,” he said.

Harley Siemens, an egg producer in south-central and southeastern Manitoba, said while egg farmers aren’t the ones in the cross-hairs, they are concerned that the supply-managed sectors stay in place.

“We still care about the system’s integrity,” he said.

Canadian dairy, specifically, has been a point of contention in Canada-U.S. relations, though Prime Minister Mark Carney has said dairy is off the table in trade negotiations.

Curtis McCrae raised the specter of Chinese tariffs on Canadian goods like canola oil and meal, peas and pork, which are typically thought of as retaliation after Canada placed tariffs on Chinese electric vehicles.

He said that if the federal government is going to use farmers as a “sacrificial lamb,” it needs to financially support farmers. “I can’t see electric vehicles ever overtaking agriculture as an economic driver of this country.”

The post Canadian farmers reveal concerns ahead of federal election appeared first on Alberta Farmer Express.

At Canada’s Outdoor Farm Show, Grober Nutrition Young Animal Specialist Pascal Bouilly told Farmtario that less work isn’t necessarily always the outcome. He said producers he works with who have installed automated feeders now take more time fine-tuning calf intake targets, monitoring calf wellbeing, and making sure the system is running at top effectiveness and cleanliness.

The difference, Bouilly suggested, is that the work surrounding calf feeding now doesn’t happen twice a day, every day, at exactly the same times.

“You now have more flexibility to manage your work day without having to fit in calf feeding at exactly those times.”

Two companies – one a relatively new entrant local to southwestern Ontario; the other a German company which started manufacturing less technologically advanced versions about 50 years ago – provided this year’s farm show visitors with information about their units.

In the Grober Nutrition Livestock Pavillion, a Forster Technik lamb-feeding automated unit was on display next to the Grober Nutrition booth. A short distance away, the company’s Cambridge-based North American CEO Jan Ziemerink had several of the newest features of the German company’s calf-feeding systems on display. Visitors to the Grober Pavillion during previous editions of the outdoor farm show in the 2010s will recall a live version of a Forster Technik system feeding calves, which no longer takes place.

Next door at the Dairy Innovation Pavilion, a live demo of the Uddermatic Milk Feeding System was available for the second year in a row. Company founder and designer Lester Martin was on hand to explain the features of the unit that was feeding several veal calves from his own Mildmay-area farm.

The post Labour savings only the beginning with automated calf feeders appeared first on Alberta Farmer Express.

His Toronto-based start-up company, UMA Systems Inc., was a first-time exhibitor inside the Dairy Innovation Centre at this year’s Canada’s Outdoor Farm Show. Lisouski noted that given Canada’s past experiences with Mad Cow Disease, the likelihood of protein ingredients derived from cattle hides being used in dairy feed is very low.

But he welcomed the opportunity to chat with farm show visitors involved in producing cattle who are concerned about the long-term environmental impacts of their operations.

Namely, his preliminary research indicates there’s virtually no domestic leather manufacturing sector in Canada, meaning hides from culled and slaughtered cattle are either disposed of entirely or possibly make their way into the U.S. or European value chains.

And even if hides do eventually get processed into leather, 50 per cent of that hide still typically goes to waste.

In Belarus, the company he helped start now has a proprietary process for turning that waste into protein supplements, with their main customer being a large operator of poultry production facilities.

Protein, says Lisouski, is often the most expensive ingredient in livestock rations. Aquaculture, which is growing in popularity around the world, also requires protein for feeds.

“We don’t have enough protein for livestock globally,” he said.

He believes converting waste from leather processing can be part of the solution to that shortage, along with eliminating a significant amount of waste that now goes to landfill or other (potentially less environmentally-conscious) methods.

“Canada is known worldwide as a leader for environmental solutions,” offered the UMA Systems entrepreneur. “But at the same time they have no way to deal with all these hides.”

“We need a solution here in Canada.”

UMA was one of companies invited to pitch at the Ag Tech Breakfast Sept. 11 at Canada’s Outdoor Farm Show

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That was the message from participants in a demo held daily in the sheep handling area during Canada’s Outdoor Farm Show 2024.

Michael Richards raises a crossbred Dorset/Rideau flock of ewes and market lambs in Haldimand County.

He was component feeding when he started, feeding dry hay in the morning, top-dressing with grain later in the day, then ultimately cleaning out what was left over in the feed bunk and feeding it to beef cattle.

Seeking cost savings and less feed waste, he bought a Jaylor “mini” TMR mixer. The results have been even better than he expected. Richards told the Wednesday afternoon “Benefits of Feeding With TMR” demo attendees that his feed costs went from $1.50 per head per day to $0.43 per head per day.

Labour savings were also significant.

This came as no surprise to ruminant nutritionist Courtney Vriens. Operator of Arthur-based Vriens Nutrition Consulting, she works with both dairy and meat sheep producers across Canada to fine-tune their flocks’ rations.

“Sheep can consume all these feed components in a very efficient manner,” she said — but not if they’re given the opportunity to sort. If grain is top-dressed for sheep in higher production stages, acidosis risk can increase. But this is mitigated when that same amount of grain is included in a TMR.

Vriens added that TMRs can allow sheep producers to switch away from expensive pelleted feeds and instead use more home-grown or alternative feeds such as corn distiller’s grains.

For the demo, Jaylor supplied a self-propelled, 91 cubic-foot mixer powered by a Honda engine and three hydraulic wheel motors.

“This mixer is quite capable of moving around inside or outside the barn,” explained Ontario/Manitoba territory manager Jerry Van Oude.

Other options in the company’s mini TMR mixer line include stationary, truck-mounted, trailer, or skidsteer-mounted.

A mix of straw, haylage and grain corn was created for the demo. Richards explained he uses corn silage in his TMR for much of the year but currently is waiting for corn harvest. Instead, he’s currently using oatlage, dry balage and some concentrate.

The post Canada’s Outdoor Farm Show 2024: TMR’s can save significant time and money appeared first on Alberta Farmer Express.

The firm says the brand bring together the work and genetic legacy of the companies that merged to establish Corteva, (notably Pioneer Seeds) and sets a new standard for agronomics, standability and yield for the category.

Greg Stubbs, an agronomist with Corteva, said the line of hybrids was grown only in plots in Ontario last year, and two heat-unit varieties were introduced commercially this season.

Corn with BMR technology, in use for over a decade among silage corn growers in Ontario, is known for its high digestibility and lower content of non-digestible fibre (NDF) when compared to traditional silage varieties. This translates into more milk produced per pound of silage consumed.

But the most widely-recognized drawback with BMR in the past, Stubbs admitted, has been lower yield potential.

“If you’re growing BMR, you just know you’re going to have to grow a couple more acres to get the same amount of silage.”

Standability has also been a challenge if weather conditions prevent harvest at ideal moisture levels.

Varieties developed for the Bovalta brand, however, have shown improvements on both fronts. And this has happened while maintaining the advantage BMR has in terms of milk production.

Last year’s difficult harvest conditions, when dairy producers sometimes had difficulty getting into the field to harvest corn silage at the optimum moisture level, provided insight into the performance of the Bovalta hybrids. And it was positive insight.

“I heard good feedback from last year,” Stubbs said.

—Updated Sept. 12. Corrects spelling of Bovalta in first paragraph.

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A recent study claimed grain-fed beef has less of a carbon impact, but Ontario farmer Ted Zettel believes that research failed to account for the long-term capacity of pasture-based farming to sequester carbon from the atmosphere.

Zettel, who runs Zettel Family Farms with his sons Mark and Sam, spoke on a panel about grass-fed and organic cattle production.

“I realize there is a spectrum of production techniques (but) … these are ruminants,” Zettel said.

Cattle efficiently convert forage to food, and “I wouldn’t want to try and defend (the climate impact of) cattle raised on grain and corn.”

The same event had one panelist, cow-calf producer Phil Woodhouse, highlight recent research that favours grain-fed production in terms of climate mitigation.

“Ruminants are great for taking energy and making meat out of it,” said Woodhouse, who also works in beef product sales for Jones Feed Mills in Lindenwood, Ont. .

When young, most types of cattle can efficiently turn grass into energy. As they approach finishing weight, grain diets take over on the feed-efficiency side so the carbon footprint of growing grain is eclipsed by the food produced.

Zettel questioned the scale of recent research. He believes carbon sequestration achieved by maintaining permanent pasture gives his farm’s system a significant advantage over those that finish animals with grain.

The comparison is even more favourable when looking at confinement feedlot operations, he added. However, Zettel described the climate impact discussion as a sideline to the typical grass-fed beef value chain.

Zettel Family Farms markets a range of organic meat products online for delivery or on-farm pick-up. Mark Zettel and his wife, Emily, run a community-shared agriculture-style market garden and Ted also brokers beef for other grass-fed producers in the area.

He said climate change effects tend to be low on the priority list for the farm’s consumers. Price, quality and familiarity with the farmer rank higher.

He senses distrust among some consumers with any certification process. People seem worried about influence from farm groups and their failure to respond to consumer concerns, so face-to-face contact is important, said Zettel.

He and Woodhouse agreed that British breeds outperform other European breeds when finishing cattle on grass. With grass-fed, Woodhouse added, the shorter stature, high-capacity phenotypes within those breeds tend to do better.

The other panelist, beef specialist James Byrne from the Ontario Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs, cautioned that grazing pastures and growing pastures are two separate processes.

“They are inter-related. Obviously, in order to have cattle that pasture, you have to grow it,” but it takes skill to manage grazing so the pasture is profitable.

Pastures are dynamic and will vary day to day, said Byrne, but the nutritional needs of cattle are relatively stable.

Given the opportunity, cattle are selective when grazing. To demonstrate why this presents a challenge, Byrne showed the growth curve of a pasture through spring, early summer, late summer and fall. The dry matter intake curve that accompanies this growth curve is similar for all grasses, he said.

“As humans, we can look at the (late summer) field and see a lot of grass. But a cow looks at the field and sees not a lot to eat.”

Cattle will seek forage other than the coarse-stemmed, mature and seedy grasses that often populate a late-summer pasture.

“You can force them to graze it but that’s not good for economic performance.”

Rotational grazing is one strategy to address this summer slump, though it’s not suitable for every operation or for every bovine, Byrne said.

For herds in which average daily gain isn’t a priority, it could be a mistake to regularly send animals into high-quality, growing pasture. Breeding animals, for example, don’t need a high level of quality feed, said Byrne. In those cases, lengthening the rotation might work better.

On a grander scale, effective rotational grazing can improve a herd’s economic performance.

Woodhouse said rotational grazing is easier to do on larger-scale farms and ranches due to the labour requirements. He has customers who are happy to have lower gain over the summer on permanent pasture and then finish the cattle on grain in the fall.

Zettel countered the thought that labour requirements can be too high. If a good system is installed and established, rotational grazing can be labour efficient, he said.

“When you get good at it, it doesn’t take long at all, and I think that’s the path to maximizing the soil improvement.”

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Many potential vectors have been considered, from migratory birds, direct cow-to-cow transmission and milking equipment. A University of Guelph veterinary professor has one word to describe this flu strain: erratic.

“We’ve never seen anything like this before — never, ever, ever,” said Shayan Sharif.

He’s been following this iteration of bird flu, caused by the virus H5N1, since it started making global waves around 2020.

• RELATED: Canada expands bird flu surveillance in dairy cattle

The American Association of Bovine Practitioners says cattle cases should be referred to as bovine influenza A virus (BIAV) to reflect that the disease is less lethal and presents with different symptoms in cattle than in poultry.

Since 2022, and until dairy cases were confirmed in March, the main struggle has involved poultry. Barn infections in the U.S. and Canada led millions of chickens and turkeys to be culled in the last few years in efforts to control spread.

“Globally, we’ve never seen an avian outbreak that has lasted for almost three years globally and has caused so much pain for the poultry industry. It’s behaving very erratically,” Sharif said.

Wild mammals, mostly predators, have also been infected, as has a juvenile goat in Minnesota.

Start of the dairy problem

On April 16, an update from the USDA’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS) indicated that they’ve so far found the virus in pigeons, grackles and blackbirds that live around dairy barns. That’s somewhat of a departure from the last few years, where birds like geese and other waterfowl were flagged as major disease reservoirs of concern.

The illness has killed several barn cats, caused a mild infection in one Texas dairy employee, and resulted in either positive or presumed positive tests on dairy cows in nine states: Kansas, Texas, New Mexico, North Carolina, South Dakota, Ohio, Idaho, Michigan and Colorado.

Dr. Jean-Pierre Vaillaincourt, an epidemiologist with University of Montreal’s Faculty of Veterinary Medicine, says influenza A virus doesn’t spread readily in feces, so chances are low that geese or ducks could infect cows during a fly-over. It also doesn’t spread easily through nasal droplets so the likelihood is low that cows would spread the virus to other cows.

However, those vectors can’t be ruled out, he said, and there is much to investigate about current infections. Vaillaincourt thinks an infected bird with access to cattle housing or feeding areas likely contaminated either feed or water in the U.S. dairy incidents.

Reports show that USDA officials “floated the possibility, without naming specific herds or locations, that all affected cows may trace back to a single farm.”

Vaillaincourt believes this means positive tests in other states resulted from cattle imported from Texas, a fact confirmed in some U.S. cases. He says it’s likely HPAI was circulating in dairy facilities in Texas and possibly in nearby states for several weeks before someone decided to test for it.

“(The infection in cows) is noticeable, but it’s not really a classic case of anything … (and) they seem to recover after two weeks. They may have, in several states, had a problem for quite some time and they didn’t know.”

Vectors

The lone human case linked to dairy infections almost certainly occurred through milk contact, most likely splashing into eyes or being introduced into eyes by contaminated hands.

An APHIS update April 26 said that, “While it is still unclear exactly how virus is spreading, the virus is shed in milk at high concentrations; therefore, anything that comes in contact with unpasteurized raw milk, spilled milk, etc. may spread the virus including other animals, vehicles, and other objects or materials.”

“Right now, the (U.S.-based) Centers for Disease Control in the U.S. is recommending people wear goggles” while dealing with infected cows, and urging against feeding raw milk to either humans or calves, Vaillaincourt said.

• RELATED: Bird flu traces found in one in five US commercial milk samples, says FDA

In Canada, sale of raw milk for human consumption is prohibited.

That’s likely not the link for new cattle infections, however. Cows don’t typically get milk in their eyes or noses and won’t knowingly eat a dead bird. But they could consume organic matter from a bird if it’s in feed or a water source.

“Water will be a big (subject of investigation),” Vaillaincourt said. “In non-treated water, this virus could survive for weeks.”

A possible cow-to-cow infection was tagged in Idaho March 30. In an April 24 statement, in which the USDA announced new rules for interstate dairy cattle movement, the agency said spread had been noted between cows in the same herd, from cows to poultry, between dairies associated with cattle movements and that virus had been found in cows without clinical signs.

In one case, lung tissue from a cull cow from an affected farm tested positive, although U.S. officials stressed no product from that cow made it into the food supply.

The Meat Institute, which speaks forAmerican meat processors, has since called for the USDA to institute testing for beef. On May 1, the USDA announced that 30 samples had been taken from retailed ground beef in infected states. No samples had tested positive for the virus.

Milking equipment is another potential vulnerability and some biosecurity recommendations also suggest rodent prevention.

“Rodents are not necessarily the best host for avian influenza, but it is possible that they could carry avian influenza into the barn,” Sharif said.

Why is this time different?

Migratory birds are the typical culprits blamed for bird flu spread. They are carriers but, in outbreaks prior to the explosion of cases in 2022, often didn’t develop signs of serious illness. This time round, that’s not the case.

“We’ve had massive die-offs of Canada geese caused by this particular strain of HPAI,” Sharif said. “In the past we wouldn’t have this (range) of behaviours displayed by the virus.”

In an April Reuters article, University of Guelph pathobiology researcher Nitish Boodhoo noted the strain infecting American cattle “has undergone a specific adaptation in an enzyme called polymerase. Changes to this viral enzyme are concerning, as it could allow for faster adaptation and maybe even support cattle-to-cattle transmission.”

In a statement reported by Reuters April 24, the USDA said it “has not found changes to the virus that would make it more transmissible to humans and between people.”

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