Paris | Reuters — China is set to overtake Britain and France to become the world’s second-largest wine consumer by value behind the U.S. by 2020 as consumers turn to more middle-range wines, the International Wine and Spirit Research (IWSR) organization said Thursday. In a study for wine fair Vinexpo it forecast Chinese wine consumption […] Read more
China seen set to become world’s second-biggest wine market
Record U.S. hog slaughter puts pressure on Canadian pork prices
CNSC/Winnipeg – A record week for U.S. slaughterhouses is weighing on hog prices in Canada. According to the USDA, hogs slaughtered under federal inspection for the week ended November 5 were pegged at 2.532 million head, which is an all-time record. That number is also up 7.2 per cent from the 2.362 million head processed a […] Read more
Christmas came early for beef and pork producers
Faced with the prospect of punishing sanctions, Congress includes repeal of COOL law in omnibus bill
Reading Time: 2 minutes Elated.” That was the word the Canadian Cattlemen’s Association used to described the U.S. Senate passage of Congress’s omnibus appropriations bill that would repeal U.S. country-of-origin labelling (COOL) for Canadian beef and pork. “This is fantastic news for Canada’s beef cattle producers,” said CCA president Dave Solverson, who ranches near Camrose. “The CCA initiated this […] Read more
Alberta Beef: Keep up country-of-origin labelling battle
Farm Vote: Rich Smith says next government must maintain the pressure on Washington in long-running dispute
Reading Time: 2 minutes Country-of-origin labelling — a.k.a. COOL — isn’t cool for Alberta’s beef producers. “We’re an exporting industry, and trade issues like country-of-origin labelling are probably our top priority,” said Rich Smith, executive director of Alberta Beef Producers. “In terms of the negative impact of COOL, it continues to have an impact of close to $1 billion […] Read more
Farmers. Do you know your customer? Try this pop quiz
Alberta exported a record $9.7 billion of agri-food products last year — but where did they go?
Reading Time: 2 minutes Farmers are being urged these days to know their customers, so here’s a pop quiz based on the province’s latest agri-food export stats. 1) The U.S. has long been the No. 1 importer of Alberta agri-food products (raw commodities and processed products). What country is No. 2 and did its purchases go up or down […] Read more
Science lacking in alarmist report on beef safety
The numerous misleading statements in a new report are no reason for consumers to lose confidence in the safety of Canadian beef
Reading Time: 3 minutes Consumer Reports’ Food Safety and Sustainability Center released its Beef Report last month. A number of questions, concerns and criticisms have been raised by the North American Meat Institute, the International Food Information Council, Business Insider, and others. Rather than answer the specific questions raised, Consumer Reports encouraged people to read the report more closely. […] Read more
What Consumer Reports said about beef safety
The organization claims that drug-resistant bacteria pose a serious and growing health threat
Reading Time: 3 minutes The following is excerpted from The Beef Report produced by Consumer Reports’ Food Safety and Sustainability Center. The full report can be found here. The danger of superbugs Foodborne illness caused by drug-resistant bacteria, such as the antibiotic-resistant strains of salmonella that have caused beef-related outbreaks in recent years, are also a major cause for […] Read more
Building the herd: The downside of strong cattle prices
Cattle prices are expected to remain strong into 2016, but what does that mean for replacement cattle next year?
Reading Time: 4 minutes Next year could see continued strong or even stronger cattle prices — and that’s a double-edged sword for producers who’ve reduced their herds this year and plan to buy replacements in 2016. Producers in prescribed drought regions who have reduced their breeding stock by at least 15 per cent can tap into the Federal Livestock […] Read more
Regulatory wrangling ups the threat of PEDv in Canada
Livestock trailers coming from the U.S. could spread the virus across Western Canada, say pork officials
Reading Time: 3 minutes Washing hog transports in the U.S. before they return to Canada sounds good in theory — but it may actually increase the threat of porcine epidemic diarrhea virus here. “We are extremely concerned about this because essentially we’re going to be sending trailers to be firehose washed at some point in the U.S. where they […] Read more
Schoepp: What’s a more important sector: oil or agriculture?
Take a comprehensive look at the facts and the answer is obvious
Reading Time: 4 minutes As we drove through the blueberry fields and cranberry bogs in southern B.C., I thought of economic generators. What, I wondered, was a bigger sustainable economic generator to our nation: oil or agriculture? An environmental scan of an industry must include the long-term effects on people and the planet. The structures that we employ for […] Read more