Keeping up to date with COVID-19 details and recommended protocols is challenging for everyone at this time. CAHRC has created a dedicated web page with the latest information, recommendations, employee management tips, tools (posters, policies) and links to authorities. These details will help you respond to the pandemic and limit the impact and spread of […] Read more
COVID-19 and farm workers: How do we manage on the farm?
Ontario offers cash for abattoir upgrades
Applications now being accepted through April
Ontario’s 123 provincially-licensed abattoirs can now start applying for a piece of $2 million in federal/provincial funding to step up food safety, biosecurity and animal welfare measures. The Ontario and federal governments on Wednesday announced applications for cost-share funding can be submitted between now and April 30, “as long as funding for the initiative is […] Read more
Ontario draws new legal lines against on-farm trespass
Ontario has introduced a legislative package setting up new legal boundaries around livestock in that province, whether on farms or in transit. The Security From Trespass and Protecting Food Safety Act, introduced Monday by Agriculture Minister Ernie Hardeman, is expected to “address the unique risks and challenges associated with trespass onto a farm or into […] Read more
Alberta proposes heavier penalties for on-farm trespassing
Alberta’s government proposes to discourage future on-farm protests — events in the style of an occupation held early last month at an Alberta Hutterite colony’s turkey farm — on pain of new penalties. Speaking Thursday at the Jumbo Valley colony near Fort Macleod, Premier Jason Kenney, Justice Minister Doug Schweitzer and Agriculture Minister Devin Dreeshen […] Read more
China’s cabinet sees ‘shortcomings’ in bid to contain swine fever
Beijing | Reuters — China has shown shortcomings in some aspects of preventing African swine fever, and the situation remains complicated and severe, the country’s cabinet said Wednesday. The management of transporting live hogs is not strict enough, while there is insufficient capacity in testing for African swine fever virus in hog slaughtering, processing and […] Read more
China faces long struggle to tackle African swine fever, OIE says
Paris | Reuters — It will take years for China to contain the deadly African swine fever virus that has spread throughout the country, which is the world’s biggest pork producer, the World Organization for Animal Health (OIE) said on Tuesday. China has been struggling to control the epidemic, which some analysts predict could see […] Read more
World Pork Expo cancelled over swine fever fears
Chicago | Reuters — The U.S. pork industry canceled its annual convention on Wednesday over concerns that international attendees could bring in an incurable hog disease at a time when U.S. farmers are already suffering from trade wars. The decision to scrap the World Pork Expo, held by the National Pork Producers Council in Des […] Read more
Alberta confirms fourth PED outbreak
Alberta took another punch last week in its fight with porcine epidemic diarrhea (PED), having confirmed the province’s fourth on-farm case of the disease. Officials with the provincial ag department and Alberta Pork haven’t said where the fourth case is located, nor how far it is from the three southern Alberta properties where outbreaks in […] Read more
The mystery deepens as third case of PED found in Alberta
It’s not known how the devastating virus arrived or how it showed up in one isolated room on a second farm
Reading Time: 5 minutes Alberta hog producers are no closer to answers about how a devastating virus found its way into the province after a third case of porcine epidemic diarrhea virus (PEDv) was confirmed at the start of March. “There are several possibilities about how it’s spreading that involve transportation, and we’re still looking into that at this […] Read more
Alberta confirms third and fourth PED cases
Update, March 4, 2019: The third PED case to which this article refers was announced Monday to be a “false positive.” Click here for details. Alberta, which until January was one of the remaining hog-producing provinces clear of porcine epidemic diarrhea (PED), is now up to four cases in three months. The provincial agriculture department […] Read more
Cyber-Savvy Farmer
