Livestock

The Toronto-based pet food maker among the hardest hit by last year’s pet food scare involving Chinese melamine posted a net loss of $62 million for fiscal 2007. Menu Foods Income Fund reported a net loss of $62.13 million on $244.8 million in sales for the year, down from $6.43 million in net income on […] Read more

The Alberta-to-Hawaii hog shipping route detailed in a report Tuesday by an international coalition of animal welfare groups as “one of the world’s cruelest transport routes” hasn’t seen any Canadian hogs since October last year, one of the groups said Wednesday. The World Society for the Protection of Animals, a partner in the Handle with […] Read more

The plant manager for Prince Edward Island’s ill-fated NOFG pork processing plant has been hired as the new executive director for the Prince Edward Island Hog Commodity Marketing Board. Tim Seeber has over 30 years’ experience in the industry, currently as the plant manager for the Charlottetown facility that Quebec City-based NOFG recently handed over […] Read more

Quebec dairy co-op Agropur reports that it’s still in expansion mode, having posted “new record” results in 2007. At its annual meeting Wednesday in Montreal, the company reported 2007 earnings (before patronage dividends and taxes) of $129.7 million on sales of $2.45 billion, up from $110 million on $2.3 billion in 2006. “Despite a fiercely […] Read more

An international coalition of animal welfare groups has launched a humane transport campaign with what it claims is damning video footage of live hogs shipped by land and sea from Lethbridge, Alta., to Hawaii in inhumane conditions for pork labelled as a Hawaiian product. The groups, spearheaded by the World Society for the Protection of […] Read more

Halifax city council will put off further debate on the idea of allowing urban residents to keep backyard chickens until a report is completed on how other cities handle the issue, CBC reported Monday. That report isn’t expected for another six or seven months. The discussion came to council after a woman in the city’s […] Read more

The Ontario government will put up $9.5 million toward a new primary-care teaching hospital for small animals at Guelph’s Ontario Veterinary College. “This will give students a high quality and diverse clinical teaching and learning experience and enable the college to expand training in nutrition, health and wellness,” the province said in a release Tuesday. […] Read more

Quebec and Ontario are urging the federal government to change up its negotiating strategy and mount a strong defense of supply management for a new World Trade Organization agreement on agriculture. In a statement Monday, Ontario Agriculture Minister Leona Dombrowsky and her Quebec counterpart, Laurent Lessard, warned that a newly revised modalities text for a […] Read more

The Eastern Canada Soil and Water Conservation Centre plans to study how or if the environmental farm plan (EFP) process can be used or even broadened to deliver an ecological goods and services (EG&S) program for farmers in New Brunswick. EG&S are the environmental benefits derived from a healthy ecosystem; EG&S programming in Canada is […] Read more

The federal government plans to put “special agricultural safeguards,” a form of duty allowed by the World Trade Organization, around Canada’s supply-managed dairy, egg and poultry sectors. Agriculture Minister Gerry Ritz announced Thursday that the government has served the WTO with notice of Canada’s intent to proceed with “finalizing the operationalization” of special agricultural safeguards […] Read more