Hidden in Manitoba Finance Minister Rosann Wowchuk’s 2011-12 budget is a $200,000 allocation for cattle insurance.

The Manitoba government has set aside $200,000 for a livestock insurance pilot program for the province’s cattle producers.

The allocation is hidden in the 2011-12 provincial budget Wowchuk brought down April 12.

The Co-operator learned about it during briefings by Treasury Board officials in a media lockup prior to Wowchuk’s budget speech in the legislature.

Wowchuk’s speech did not announce the program other than to say that the province is “working to develop a range of livestock insurance programs to support producers.”

But provincial Agriculture Minister Stan Struthers later confirmed the allocation is included in a $6.87 million funding increase to the province’s AgriInsurance program.

Struthers said the $200,000 set-aside is the province’s share of a planned pilot project to insure cattle producers against sudden drops in market prices, similar to one operating in Alberta for several years.

Manitoba would like Ottawa to contribute another $300,000, based on a traditional 60:40 federal-provincial funding split, to make the program worth $500,000 in total.

The province is also open to co-operating with Alberta and Saskatchewan in a Prairie-wide cattle insurance program, said Struthers.

“Manitoba is willing to team up with anyone to offer especially a cow-calf insurance program.”

But if neither option works out, Manitoba will go it alone, he said.

“We think we can move forward with a plan based on the $200,000. We can enhance that pilot project if the federal government would be involved, too,” said Struthers.

Struthers could not say when the pilot might be launched. Discussions with Ottawa are currently on hold during the federal election campaign.

But he said the province intends to resume negotiations immediately after the May 2 election results are known.

The Manitoba Agricultural Services Corp. will administer the program, as it does with all other farm production insurance programs.

Livestock production insurance is a priority for Manitoba’s cattle producers. Manitoba Beef Producers has lobbied tirelessly for it, demanding something to put cattle farmers on an equal footing with grain growers who have crop insurance.

MBP issued a statement following the budget expressing disappointment that the budget “failed to announce any specific insurance program for Manitoba’s struggling livestock sector.”

— Ron Friesen is a reporter for the Manitoba Co-operator in Winnipeg. Condensed from Manitoba Co-operator, April 21, 2011, page 1.

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Major and possibly expensive changes lie ahead for Manitoba’s 700 hog producers as the result of a new roadmap for the industry’s future.

The Manitoba Pork Council’s plan released last week commits hog farmers to eliminate sow gestation stalls within the next 15 years.

“Manitoba Pork commits to encouraging producers to phase out by 2025 the style of dry sow stalls currently used. New forms of housing must be practical and provide protection to animals and humans alike,” states a document titled Embracing a Sustainable Future.

It’s just one of 82 commitments in a strategy aimed at making Manitoba’s hog industry more sustainable. Besides green farming practices, the plan also commits producers to new practices on animal care, odour control, food safety, and public awareness.

But the commitment to gradually get rid of sow stalls is the one with the biggest potential impact on producers.

Manitoba Pork Council chairman Karl Kynoch was vague when asked how farmers will afford the transition and how the industry will enforce it, but he insisted producers have no choice but to make the change because public opinion requires it.

“We compete in a world market. Some of these things in here that consumers are demanding, we have to find a way that we can meet these and still stay competitive in the world,” Kynoch said during a March 16 news conference held to launch the strategy.

“You make a choice at the end of the day. You have to meet a lot of this stuff or you won’t survive.”

Bill McDonald, Winnipeg Humane Society CEO, applauded the pork council’s sow stall announcement as a “watershed moment, in our mind.”

The WHS has actively campaigned for years against the use of gestation crates for pregnant sows.

But McDonald said the society will continue its “Quit Stalling” campaign to encourage consumers to buy pork raised in stall-free operations.

“Five Freedoms”

McDonald called another commitment in the council’s 82-point strategy equally significant. It embraces the so-called “Five Freedoms” for food animals, which includes the freedom for animals to express their normal behaviour. That would include rooting and nesting, which pregnant sows can only do in an open-housing system, McDonald said.

Among the other sustainability-related commitments in the Manitoba Pork Council’s document are:

• locating barns and manure storages at least one km from lakes or rivers and at least 100 metres from creeks or wells used for drinking water;
• applying manure at least three metres from ditches and 30 metres from lakes;
• planting at least 25,000 trees around pig farms over the next five years;
• certifying producers under the national Animal Care Assessment program;
• supporting the provincial building code for farm buildings;
• funding additional research into Lake Winnipeg water quality;
• supporting livestock traceability systems;
• using antibiotics judiciously; and
• continuing to look for ways to expand hog slaughter and pork processing in the province.

— Ron Friesen is a reporter with the Manitoba Co-operator in Winnipeg. Condensed from the Co-operator, March 24, 2011, page 8.

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The Vancouver Humane Society is campaigning to ban calf roping (also called tie-down roping) from rodeos across Canada.

VHS is not specifically targeting the Morris stampede, as it did the Calgary Stampede the previous week with advertisements in the Globe and Mail and other media. But the society is encouraging all rodeos in Canada to eliminate calf roping from its programs, said Peter Fricker, VHS projects and communications director in Vancouver.

The organization calls calf roping “a cruel spectacle of animal abuse” which allegedly creates unnecessary fear and pain in calves only a few months old.

But rodeo officials say the event is governed by strict rules and closely monitored to ensure animal welfare.

“We police ourselves quite well, in my mind,” said Jim Pippolo, rodeo administrator for the Canadian Professional Rodeo Association in Calgary.

VHS received a boost to its anti-calf roping campaign two years ago. The Cloverdale Rodeo in Surrey, B.C., under pressure from the society and other animal welfare groups, eliminated several major events, including calf roping, from its program after a calf was injured in the ring and had to be euthanized.

Pippolo said such incidents are rare. During CPRA’s entire 2008 rodeo circuit, injuries occurred in 0.5 per cent of the roughly 15,000 events held, he said.

Pippolo was at the Cloverdale Rodeo when the event occurred. He said the roper involved was fined and suspended.

He said calves in tie-down events are “preconditioned” — practised on at least three times so they know what to expect. If an animal is jerked over backwards after being roped (called “jerk down”), the roper receives a time penalty. In an event in which winners are decided by tenths of a second, competitors must be careful to avoid penalties, Pippolo said.

He said calf roping is still practised on ranches, it’s a standard management technique and therefore a legitimate competitive event.

But Fricker said calf roping on a ranch does not involve time pressure and extreme stress to the animal, as tie-down in a rodeo ring does.

He said the Cloverdale Rodeo hasn’t suffered by dropping the event after 2007. In fact, it attracted record crowds in 2008 and 2008, VHS says on its website.

“Generally booed”

The VHS campaign didn’t exactly receive a warm welcome at the Calgary Stampede. Most local media refused to run its advertisements. Even the local humane society did not endorse the campaign.

But Fricker insisted certain events, such as calf roping, steer wrestling, bull riding and chuckwagon racing, are unnecessary at rodeos because they’re either inhumane or not part of traditional Western on-farm culture.

Tim Lewis, Manitoba Stampede and Exhibition president, said the Morris rodeo has seen animal rights activists in the past but not lately.

When demonstrators walked out in front of the grandstand crowd with their placards, they “generally got booed,” he said.

The vast majority of people who attend rodeos are knowledgeable about the sport and not sympathetic to protesters, Lewis said.

“If they come to a rodeo, they know what to expect,” he said. “Right now, we haven’t seen it as a huge issue,”

The Morris stampede ranks among the top 12 of the 62 CPRA-sanctioned rodeos in Canada.

— Ron Friesen is a reporter for the Manitoba Co-operator.

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