Livestock

A “more favourable” dairy ingredients market helped boost year-end sales and profits for Canada’s biggest dairy processor, but bigger bills have Saputo looking at ways to contain its operating costs in 2011. The Montreal company on Tuesday booked net earnings of $451.12 million on $6.025 billion in revenues for the year ending March 31, up […] Read more

The Canadian-born Cargill executive who oversaw construction of the company’s beef packing plant at High River, Alta., will now be responsible for the company’s global food safety efforts. Bill Buckner, a southern Ontario native and McMaster University graduate who managed the High River plant from its opening in 1989, has been a senior vice-president at […] Read more

Quebec’s first draft of a comprehensive public policy on agrifood proposes what the government calls a “major” cultural change by focusing the policy on the food and, by extension, the consumer. The policy document, called the Green Paper (“livre vert”) for an Agrifood Policy and titled Donner le gout du Quebec (“Giving a taste for […] Read more

Quebec meat packer Olymel and New Brunswick poultry producer Groupe Westco are claiming an appeal court victory they say will allow them to move on plans for a New Brunswick chicken slaughter plant. The two companies reported Monday that the Federal Court of Appeal has ruled in their favour in an ongoing dispute over whether […] Read more

The Bloc Quebecois’ critic for agriculture and agrifood will take on added critic responsibilities in his party’s much-reduced caucus. Andre Bellavance, the MP for Richmond-Arthabaska and the Bloc’s agriculture critic since 2006, was named Thursday to keep that role and to handle the critic portfolios for international trade, industry and procedure and House affairs. Bellavance, […] Read more

Limits on expansion in Manitoba’s hog industry, again meant to reduce phosphorus levels in Lake Winnipeg, will now include a requirement for “advanced environmental practices” on farms before new barns can be built. Reversing nutrient loading in the lake now also finds the province considering buyouts of farmers in flood-prone areas as part of a […] Read more

The owners of the KFC brand have handed the reins for over 200 of the fried chicken chain’s 700-plus Canadian restaurants to a new franchise partner. Soul Restaurants Canada, an arm of U.K.-based Soul Foods Group, has taken over management of 204 KFC restaurants — mostly in British Columbia and Ontario, with four in Quebec […] Read more

The animal health arm of drug maker Pfizer has launched a single-dose antibiotic it claims will tighten up the milk discard time needed to treat lactating dairy cows for bovine respiratory disease (BRD). Pfizer Animal Health’s Canadian unit, based at Kirkland, Que., on Wednesday rolled out Excede 200, indicated for treatment of BRD associated with […] Read more