Romania is among five eastern European Union countries along with Bulgaria, Hungary, Poland and Slovakia that saw a surge of Ukrainian grain imports after Russia invaded Ukraine. This distorted local markets and prompted farmer protests, leading the EU to approve curbs on Ukrainian grain imports — while still allowing grain transiting elsewhere — until Sept. 15.

Poland, Slovakia and Hungary announced their own unilateral bans on Friday, prompting Ukraine to file a complaint against the three states at the World Trade Organization.

Ukraine has proposed to the European Commission, the EU executive, and neighbouring countries an export control plan for four groups of crops — wheat, maize, sunflower and rapeseed — to protect local markets.

On Tuesday, it approved the introduction of export licences for a number of agricultural products for export to the five eastern EU states.

“Export licenses for Ukrainian companies will become operational in 30 days,” Romania’s Barbu said. “During this time, Romania will also create a clear import-licensing procedure for Romanian farmers and processors.”

Barbu added: “I am confident that this mechanism proposed by the European Commission, taken on board by Ukraine and negotiated by us in farmers’ interest, will fully function.”

Ukraine is one of the world’s biggest grain exporters and since Russia’s invasion last year, the Romanian Black Sea port of Constanta has become Kyiv’s largest alternative export route, with grains arriving by road, rail or barge across the Danube.

Barbu also said Romania would only issue import licences to Romanian farmers and food processors who need to replenish stocks, not intermediaries, and that food safety inspections would be conducted on all imports.

— Reporting for Reuters by Luiza Ilie.

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The five commissioners, three Democrats and two Republicans, voted unanimously to approve the policy statement.

“The FTC has a range of tools it can use to root out unlawful repair restrictions and today’s policy statement would commit us to move forward on this issue with new vigour,” FTC chair Lina Khan said at an unusual open hearing, the second held by the agency this month.

Commissioner Noah Phillips, a Republican, supported the step. “While there are repair restrictions that are legitimate, whether it’s smartphones or tractors, I absolutely agree that there are many unwarranted restrictions that make it (repairs) excessively difficult and expensive,” he said.

The vote followed an agency report released in May that found that manufacturers often discourage repairs by third parties that can charge consumers less than dealers. These include disparaging spare parts not made by the manufacturer, and license agreements.

The issue was one of dozens spelled out in an executive order that the Biden White House put out this month.

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce vehemently objected to the way the meeting was conducted. Sean Heather, a chamber vice-president, said the agency’s new open meetings “have embraced a vote now, discuss policy later approach that ignores public input, making the entire process anything but transparent and above board.”

The FTC’s commissioners voted along party lines to rescind a 1995 policy statement regarding prior approval of mergers. With the statement rescinded, a company that had been stopped from proceeding with one merger must give prior notice to the FTC if it is contemplating a similar transaction. The FTC could then stop the new deal without spending months to investigate the new deal.

Commissioner Christine Wilson, a Republican, said there was no evidence to support scrapping the 1995 policy statement.

Commissioner Rebecca Slaughter, a Democrat, said FTC staff spent a lot of time and resources looking at “clearly anti-competitive” mergers. “I think a lot about the deterrent effect that we need to be sending,” she said.

The FTC also voted unanimously to keep a rule requiring clothing manufacturers to spell out how their clothing should be cared for but indicated that it would update it.

— Reporting for Reuters by Diane Bartz.

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The suspensions took effect at 12:01 p.m. Tuesday, a CGC official said in an interview.

“This means for a limited period of time (until April 30) activities (by W.A. Grain) that would require a licence are suspended, which include in principle purchasing grain from western Canadian producers and trading in grain in reference to CGC grades,” Remi Gosselin, the CGC’s head of communications said.

Gosselin declined to comment specifically on what prompted the CGC to suspend the Innisfail, Alta.-based company’s licences.

“I can’t get into that, only to say at this point we want to give them a chance to manage their finances and they have nine days to do so,” Gosselin said. “April 30 we will decide if their licences are reinstated or revoked.”

The CGC could also opt to extend the suspensions or reinstate the licences with conditions, he said.

“There is justifiable cause for us to take the actions we did,” he said. “We need to have assurance that they will be able to meet their assurances of licensing beyond April 30. I’ll just leave it at that.”

To be licensed, companies must demonstrate they can pay farmers for the grain they are taking delivery of, and must post security to cover those liabilities.

If the CGC revokes W.A. Grain’s licences, farmers owed money by the company will be asked to submit their claims to the CGC to access security posted by the company. It’s also possible they might get some or all their grain back in-kind.

If it comes to that, affected farmers must document their claims with proper receipts.

Claims are also time-limited. CGC payment protection expires 90 days after grain has been delivered, or 30 days after a cheque for the grain has been issued.

The suspensions include W.A. Grain’s grain dealer’s licence, as well as the licences for its primary elevators at Pambrun, Ponteix and Vanguard in southwestern Saskatchewan and at Bashaw and Bowden in central Alberta.

“The (CGC) order prohibits any movement of grain and that means selling stocks in store, accepting producer deliveries as well as contracting new grain sales unless the grain commission is satisfied there is sufficient inventory to cover outstanding elevator receipts,” Gosselin said.

The CGC won’t know how much grain W.A. Grain has in-store until it conducts an audit, he said.

Several pulse crop buyers have recently experienced financial difficulties, prompting the CGC to revoke their licences and pay farmers using companies’ posted security.

The CGC suspended the licences of Canpulse Foods and Global Grain Canada and their parent company Globeways Canada last Oct. 31, when they were unable to provide security to cover farm liabilities.

All the farmers eligible for compensation were covered, the CGC announced March 2.

The CGC received 40 eligible claims involving Canpulse, totalling more than $3 million. There were 13 eligible claims for farmers dealing with Global Grain, worth nearly $700,000.

Global Grain’s liability was reduced because a number affected farmers were able to get their grain back, Gosselin said.

Two hundred and twenty-two farmers deemed eligible were paid a record $11.1 million through the CGC’s producer protection program in 2020 after ILTA Grain, which specialized in pulse crops, went out of business in 2019.

Another 49 farmers, however, didn’t qualify because of the time limits and collectively lost $1.5 million.

That’s why the CGC urges farmers to get paid as soon as they deliver.

While the CGC monitors licensed grain companies monthly, sometimes buyers can get quickly overextended.

Industry observers say pulse crop buyers are generally more at risk of financial problems for a combination of reasons.

Most are small companies with limited resources.

There are no pulse futures markets, so purchases and sales can’t be hedged, and pulse crop prices can often be more volatile.

Right now it’s also harder to access the shipping containers used to export pulse crops.

— Allan Dawson reports for the Manitoba Co-operator from Miami, Man.

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In a draft guidance issued for the consultation, Health Canada highlighted recent police raids and arrests at production sites where people were using licenses to “cover and support large-scale illegal production and sale.”

The move comes as Canada tries to fix its ailing pot market, where illegal producers sell more annually than hundreds of licensed cultivators, even over two years after the country became the first major nation to legalize weed in 2018.

Households spent more than $3.1 billion buying non-medical pot from illicit channels last year versus $2.9 billion of legal purchases, according to Statistics Canada data.

“Abuse of the medical purposes framework undermines the integrity of the system that many patients and health care practitioners rely on to access cannabis to address their medical needs,” Health Canada said in the draft document.

Reuters first reported the news earlier on Monday.

The draft guidance for the first time sets out factors that the regulator may consider in refusing or revoking a registration for “personal production.” Factors include authorization of unjustified amounts and “criminal activity and/or diversion of cannabis.”

In January, Ontario Provincial Police seized over 180,000 cannabis plants and numerous vehicles and firearms by raiding illegal cultivation facilities, many of which exploit Health Canada’s personal medical weed cultivation licenses.

Under the rules, people using cannabis for medical purposes must get a daily amount authorized by medical care practitioners — doctors, nurses and social workers — to either be bought from official retailers or grown personally.

Health Canada said in December it was seeing a surge in the amount of pot personal cultivators were being authorized to grow.

The number of patients registered for purchase from federally licensed retailers was 377,024 in September last year, a 24 per cent increase from June. Meanwhile, registrations for personal cultivation grew 29 per cent over the period to 43,211.

Even though personal cultivators remain a small fraction of overall patient registrations, these people are allowed to grow as much as 36 grams per day on average, compared with just two grams authorized for daily purchase from retailers.

As part of its public consultation, Health Canada said it was inviting Canadians to share their views on the factors that should be considered in “refusal or revocation of a registration on public health and public safety ground.”

The consultation will run for 60 days through May 7, the regulator said.

After the end of the two-month period, the regulator plans to finalize the guidance and make it public.

— Shariq Khan reports on the cannabis sector for Reuters from Bangalore.

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The cancellation, announced Monday, indefinitely prolongs what was already described as “critical processing capacity shortage” for the province’s cattle producers, leaving them to seek other markets and feed cattle far longer than anticipated.

The Canadian Food Inspection Agency said Monday it made the decision to cancel the licenses for Ryding-Regency Meat Packers, Canadian Select Meats and The Beef Boutique — the latter two operating under the St. Ann’s Foods banner — all of which were already suspended in September as part of an E. coli food safety investigation.

The companies’ licenses were suspended separately in mid-September because they “failed to implement effective control measures” at the facilities, CFIA said at the time.

However, during its investigation, CFIA said Monday, it also “identified (it) had received false or misleading information from the licence holders concerning E. coli lab results.”

Effective immediately, CFIA said, the companies in question “are no longer able to slaughter food animals or prepare meat products for export or to be sent from one province or territory to another.”

Beef Farmers of Ontario for weeks had been calling for “an expedited process to assist (Ryding-Regency) in rectifying the noted gaps in food safety protocols” that led to the suspensions.

“Given the uncertainties that exist, we strongly advise members to seek alternative harvesting arrangements for existing inventory, if arrangements have not already been made at other establishments,” BFO said in a statement Nov. 11.

The cattle producer organization said members should contact its office “if you are experiencing difficulty” making such arrangements.

In a statement posted in September on its website following the license suspensions, Ryding-Regency had said it “continue(s) to co-operate with the CFIA to ensure that all requirements are being met, and that improvements are being implemented to strengthen our daily business practices.”

Through the investigation, the company said on its site, it “concluded, that on isolated production days, we experienced breakdowns in our operating procedures,” and announced voluntary product recalls from those days as a result.

Ryding-Regency said at the time it “did not knowingly release any contaminated products, and there have been no complaints from industry.”

‘Uncertainty and duress’

CFIA’s announcement comes in the wake of what the Ontario Federation of Agriculture had described separately Thursday as “a state of uncertainty and duress” for the province’s cattle producers that has so far lasted “more than a year.”

Losses on beef cattle operations in Ontario and Quebec combined have risen above $150 million since January 2019, a situation OFA said Thursday is “not sustainable.”

OFA on Thursday cited “depressed market prices, trade and market access barriers, a shortage of processing capacity and most recently, the prolonged licence suspension for Ryding-Regency Meat Packers, a significant player in beef processing for Eastern Canada” — a situation the group said at the time “needs to be resolved immediately.”

The OFA said the resulting “critical processing capacity shortage — combined with a serious competitiveness crisis — is costing the sector millions of dollars in lost income, threatening the viability of Ontario beef farms, livestock truckers, auction barns, processors and other associated industries that make this billion-dollar sector thrive.”

Processing backlogs, OFA said Thursday, “are becoming more frequent and severe, requiring farmers to feed cattle at increased costs for longer periods, resulting in producers being penalized for overweight animals when they finally secure processing space.”

With beef farmers having “no immediate recourse to address these challenges,” OFA and other groups on Thursday called for “immediate government action to aid in the resolution of the mounting threats facing Ontario farmers.”

BFO and Les Producteurs de bovins du Quebec in September called on governments to set up a national emergency beef cattle investment and assistance program to help farmers in Ontario and Quebec “mitigate market losses and the disturbances of recent trade and market disruptions,” OFA noted.

Longer-term, OFA said, “a plan to support the expansion of processing capacity to service Ontario and Eastern Canada is needed. Too many processors have exited the sector in recent years, leaving too few processors to place bids on cattle to ensure a competitive, healthy marketplace.” — Glacier FarmMedia Network

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