And if all goes to plan, an owner’s version should by ready by then, too.

“The standard has been published. We’re still working on a producer’s manual that will be an aid for producers to implement,” said Rob McNabb, general manager of the Canadian Cattlemen’s Association (CCA).

Biosecurity is a standardized protocol for reducing the risk of contracting and spreading diseases, pests, and invasive species, and it’s an increasingly important facet of livestock production. Avian influenza prompted industry and the Canadian Food Inspection Agency to create the nation’s first sector-specific biosecurity protocol, but all other sectors have since initiated the process, such as sheep, goat, dairy, mink and bees.

CFIA is currently reviewing a user-friendly producer’s guide which is expected to be available in the near future, said McNabb.

The CCA worked with CFIA to develop the protocol and will help launch the initiative, but once that’s complete, the provinces will have to take the baton.

“The responsibility for implementing biosecurity will be at the provincial level,” he said, adding Manitoba, for one, was so gung-ho about the idea it created its own user guide rather than waiting.

“Our main commitment was to provide the education and awareness tools that producers can use and then who knows, the future could be that we incorporate it into our On-Farm Food Safety infrastructure.”

The protocol isn’t mandatory, but McNabb expects good buy-in.

“We think it will be another attribute we can add to the Canadian Beef Advantage if we get that critical mass of production under that,” he said.

Among the practices being recommended are segregation of cattle coming back from community pastures or from other ranches, and keeping an on-farm visitors’ log.

In many cases, the protocol will merely formalize what producers have been doing for decades.

“The original process involved an extensive survey of producers and I think what we found is that a lot of these practices are just everyday good management and, for the most part, are being observed or implemented without a lot of second thought,” said McNabb. “But now there’s an opportunity to document it or perhaps kick it up a notch.”

— A version of this article appeared in the Nov. 5, 2012 edition of Alberta Farmer.

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“If it doesn’t reopen, that will devastate the Canadian industry. It’s disappointing this thing couldn’t move faster and with more answers. If we could have progressed quicker to a resolution versus laying people off — it sounds like a prolonged process to get re-listed,” said Alberta Beef Producers (ABP) chairman Doug Sawyer.

“Producers need to know what’s going to happen and what to do and feedlots need to know where they can market these cattle,” he said.

While the cow-calf sector is nervously awaiting news about the Lakeside plant at Brooks, Alta., feeders are even more worried about where to send finished cattle.

“These fats that were contracted into Lakeside, we’re having trouble getting trucks to get them down south to be processed,” Sawyer said.

Compounding the uncertainty, XL on Saturday laid off most of the Brooks plant’s staff, then on Sunday recalled about 40 per cent of the workers to finish processing stored carcasses at the plant under CFIA supervision.

The Brooks plant’s federal license was suspended Sept. 27 in the wake of a still-expanding, weeks-long recall of beef products and primal cuts, shipped from XL to processors and retailers across Canada and the U.S., on concerns over contamination with E. coli O157:H7 bacteria.

CFIA said it would allow the processing of carcasses in order to watch the plant’s upgraded food safety protocols in action. The resulting beef products will remain in detention and no slaughter cattle are allowed entry.

Sawyer and others remain concerned what a possible permanent loss of the plant could mean for the Canadian cattle industry.

“That’s huge. Moving cattle into the U.S. for slaughter and not having a fully Canadian product… We built up really strong Canadian brands, and we have retailers and wholesalers that are loyal to the Canadian brand. Now we may have trouble getting enough Canadian product to fulfill the Canadian brand orders that we have.”

The closure at Brooks piles on top of already-reduced Canadian slaughter capacity. Earlier this year, the Levinoff-Colbex plant in Quebec was closed, and XL’s smaller plants at Moose Jaw, Sask. and at Calgary have also closed in recent years.

“Anytime we lose infrastructure that impacts our ability to move cattle through our Canadian system, so a U.S. border closure would have significant impact on our ability to get these cattle processed,” Sawyer said.

ABP is working with other producer groups and the provincial governments to try and fix the problem, he said.

“We need this plant back open. It’s crucial infrastructure to our Canadian industry and it’s very important to the economy of this province.”

Long-term commitment

Dennis Laycraft, executive vice-president of the Canadian Cattlemen’s Association, said the industry is already preparing for the possibility the plant will remain closed for the short or long term.

“Will the plant remain closed while they try and sell the plant, which we think is a pretty clear possibility?” he said. “There have been suggestions come up about leasing it to someone else. Whomever gets involved, we want to make sure they have a long-term commitment to the success of that operation.”

Laycraft said the CCA is examining possibilities of increased slaughter capacity elsewhere. “We’ve been in touch with a number of companies and certainly, Cargill is the clearest one who could ramp up more quickly by killing Saturdays and increasing their daily throughput and they’re doing that,” Laycraft said.

U.S. plants are another option, but Laycraft said the biggest short-term challenge is trucking capacity, as there are fewer companies still approved to go to the United States.

In the meantime, some U.S. plants are stepping up processing, and others are establishing segregation protocols for killing Canadian cattle.

Laycraft said the industry has learned from the closure of the U.S. border due to BSE.

“I think one thing is clear — we don’t want to be so dependent on the U.S. that we’re back in the same situation we were back in 2003.”

Calves heading south?

Another problem looms for the Canadian industry. If feeders aren’t rushing to buy fall calves, too many may end up south of the border. “We need to create enough certainty in the industry that we can continue on so that feeders feel they can continue to fill the pens and the cow-calf industry will still want to retain heifers and build to the future,” said Laycraft.

Milt Scott, general manager of Thorlakson Feedyards near Airdrie, Alta. is concerned the plant will stay dark because of what he feels was an extreme overreaction by the CFIA.

“Today’s problem is big government flexing their muscle and really trying to prove a point. If you really get down to laymen’s terms, they overdid the recall, ran to cover their butts and once you start covering your butts, then where do you stop?” Scott said.

“My question to the CFIA is if they had 40 inspectors plus six veterinarians in there, they were in there prior to September — why didn’t they stop it then?”

Scott fears the crisis will result in the loss of as much as 20 per cent of Alberta’s feedlots.

“If we can’t afford to buy the feeder cattle because our price for the fats is going to be Washington less freight then yes, the feeder cattle are going to move south.”

Jobs will move too, Scott said.

“We’re taking all the infrastructure out of Canada, especially Western Canada, and we’re going to move it south. Alberta is a vast land that produces forage — it makes zero sense to haul the cattle away from where the forage is produced.”

Related stories:
Klassen: Calf market drifts lower, Oct. 15, 2012
XL recalls some laid-off beef plant workers, Oct. 15, 2012
“Hang on, all things will pass”: XL chief Nilsson, Oct. 12, 2012

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XL’s Lakeside plant at Brooks, Alta., which slaughters about 40 per cent of Canadian cattle, has been closed since Sept. 27 due to E. coli contamination, leading to 12 confirmed cases of illness and a wide-ranging product recall.

“They requested information and we have given it from the very start in a very timely fashion,” Nilsson said in an interview. “We have done nothing but co-operate 100 per cent. We’ve had a crew dedicated to it, and team members that have gone through many, many long-houred days to make sure that we fully facilitate and co-operate with the CFIA.”

On Oct. 11 the plant was given permission to process carcasses that were hung to be aged before it was shut down, and which have tested negative for E. coli. However there has been no indication when the plant will be allowed to resume slaughter.

Nilsson says he doesn’t know the cost yet for the corrective actions the plant has undertaken in an effort to regain CFIA’s approval, but he says it’s substantial.

The president of UFCW Local 401 has claimed that faster line speeds at the plant were causing increasing worker injuries and putting the safety protocol at risk.

Nilsson said the plant had been running at a line speed of 280 animals per hour, which isn’t as fast as regulations permit.

“If we were to be measured against all the plants in North America… probably a true economist would ask us why we weren’t running a little bit faster.”

Though the plant’s 2,200 workers haven’t been to work for two weeks, they’ve still been paid for their 32-hour work week as per their contract, but Nilsson said he is not sure how long that will continue.

“At this point they have been called back to fabricate these carcasses the CFIA has given us permission to do. As far as going forward, we really don’t know because we don’t know what new rules are waiting for us and I’m uncertain of what that brings,” he said, adding he has no idea when the plant will be re-listed and fully functional again.

“It’s been day-by-day with a lot of questions about when, and what if, and how it will be. Certainly, I have no shortage of questions.I say ‘soon,’ but I say that with reservation.”

Communication strategy

The Alberta-based company has been criticized for only speaking to the media through press releases. Nilsson said in retrospect, there may have been a better way to handle it, the company was focused on the actual problem.

“From the start, our No. 1 priority was to get the CFIA all the information they wanted, and to co-operate with whatever they wanted. It probably would have made for great reading, but we never felt that at any time it was appropriate to have a debate in the media, and there was no time for that. We were focused on going forward, getting this resolved, and that has been our focus from the very start.”

The CFIA has said XL failed to provide information or to make corrective actions as quickly as needed, but Nilsson says the company has moved as fast as it can.

“I challenge anyone in the CFIA to show where we did not co-operate or where we hid something — that just wasn’t the truth. There was absolutely no resistance from us. Anything they wanted they were given at the plant level,” he said.

In the early portion of the recall, he said, it might have taken some time to retrieve requested information, but those were logistical issues involving cross-referencing data codes and customer codes to translate them for the CFIA.

“There certainly instances where it took us a day to get the information, but Istress there was never any time that we were holding or hiding any information.”

Nilsson confirmed the plant’s decision to recall the primal cuts was unusual, but it seemed the most expedient way to solve what was turning out to be a red-tape issue between trading partners.

“Because the U.S. and the CFIA had different stances and worked under marginally different regulations, it got tied up almost in a bureaucracy, and for us the safest way out was to do this far-reaching recall.”

Nilsson said the company is concerned for anyone who became ill, for the public, and for all the company’s workers.

“I would like to publicly thank all of our team members at head office and at the plant, and everyone involved. It has been a trying time and all that we have done from the very start is try to co-operate and do whatever we can to fix it.”

Nilsson said he understands the disruption has caused the cattle industry, since the XL plant is one of the two largest in the country.

“I know it’s caused a great amount of turmoil in the beef community. I’d just like to say hang on because all things will pass, but at this point there seems to be an uncertainty as to which direction CFIA is going with regard to E. coli at my plant, or any other plant in the country,” Nilsson said.

Related stories:
Beef processing resumes at XL plant under lockdown, Oct. 11, 2012
Ranchers wait out beef recall, exports to U.S. grow, Oct. 11, 2012
XL found lacking in E. coli documentation, beard nets, Oct. 9, 2012

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Governor Brian Schweitzer announced in February that Chinese investors were interested in developing a facility capable of processing 800,000 pigs. But additional details are scarce.

“At this point there’s no proposal,” said John Adams, a reporter with the Great Falls Tribune who has been covering the story. “Nobody has made an application. As far as I know, there’s not even a specific company that’s proposing this.”

This isn’t the first time the idea has been floated for a plant at Shelby, about 60 km south of the border crossing at Coutts, Alta. Most of the state’s hogs are processed in California and Idaho.

“The governor says China wants this pork, we can provide it, so let’s get a pork-processing plant built,” said Adams. “There’s been talk for a long time about a pork facility in Shelby as part of a new intermodal hub. There would be a number of different companies that would use this hub for transporting and putting products in containers — some of which would go on trains and (be) shipped to the West Coast or the Midwest. Others would go on trucks.”

Although Montana’s pork industry is much smaller than Alberta’s, producers north of the border would benefit from having another potential buyer, said Jim Haggins, chairman of Alberta Pork.

“Their (hog producers) are almost 100 per cent Hutterite colonies,” said Haggins, who lives in Calgary. “It’s considerably smaller in Montana. But as you suspected, that location would be an attraction for producers out of southern Alberta. Anybody south of Claresholm would be closer to a plant in Shelby than they would to Red Deer, for instance.”

“Strategic location”

Currently, Alberta is home to four federally inspected pork processors: Olymel in Red Deer, which processes 35,000 head weekly; Maple Leaf Meats at Lethbridge, which processes 6,500 head per week; Sunterra Meats at Trochu, with 3,000 weekly; and Sturgeon Valley Pork in Morinville, which processes 2,000 each week.

“That’s not anywhere close to their capacity though — there’s actually excess packing capacity right now so that’s causing producers to shift around to the best financial market,” said Haggins, adding that Alberta pork is also being processed in B.C., Saskatchewan and Manitoba.

A Shelby plant processing 10,000-plus pigs weekly would require animals from Canada to be efficient.

“It is a strategic location for them,” Haggins said. “There have been rumblings of that for the last five years or so. Shelby has been considered before — if it goes ahead, that’s all good news. It’s a long road. They talk about having construction next year, but we’ll see.”

Alberta produces 2.3 million market hogs per year, down sharply since the market collapse in 2009.

“Our sow base was capable of producing four million (market hogs) before, but the sow base has dropped by about a third,” said Haggins. Alberta is currently home to 135,000 sows.

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“That’s unfortunately a very painful process,” said Howard Oudman, general manager of the plant at Innisfail, about 30 km south of Red Deer.

“It’s painful for the owners, but it’s even more painful for those families who have been directly impacted by the loss of jobs.”

The SunGold plant — formerly Sunterra Meats and, before that, Canada West Foods, Lambco — was bought in February by Canada Gold Beef with an eye to establishing a branded beef line.

“We’ve made a considerable amount of physical improvements and upgrades to the plant in both infrastructure and equipment,” Oudman said. “And that had dual purpose for both beef and lamb, but the plan is very much now towards making this primarily a lamb facility given the situation with the EU quota.”

It was hoped the European Union quota system would create opportunities for Canada to export beef across the Atlantic, but it’s not working out that way, said rancher and beef promoter Christoph Weder, who markets a branded beef line, Heritage Angus, in Europe.

“It’s actually acting almost like a tariff again because there’s extra costs in the system and it either slows the beef down by making it too expensive, or some companies just can’t sell their product based on that,” said Weder, whose beef is processed at a Lacombe plant.

The problem is twofold, he said. First, some meat companies that don’t import meat are applying for a slice of the so-called Hilton quota, which allows 23,000 tonnes into the EU with a tariff of 20 per cent. They then sell the quota to companies that want to import, which drives up their costs.

As well, this new system has encouraged exporters in countries such as New Zealand and Uruguay to target Europe, increasing competitive pressure on more traditional exporters such as Canada, the U.S. and Australia.

“Frustrating”

The cost and uncertainty of exporting to Europe wasn’t worth it, said Oudman.

“We had been slaughtering a reasonable number of EU protocol cattle every week; we’ve suspended that business and decided that we’ll really focus on building the lamb business,” he said.

A number of companies are pressuring the European Commission to put an end to the selling or trading of quota, but no quick resolution is expected, said Weder.

SunGold decided it simply couldn’t wait for reforms, said Oudman.

“It’s quite disheartening and frustrating,” he said. “We’ve spent an inordinate amount of time in discussions with our government officials and trade negotiators and the reasons are what they are, and they’re just unable to rectify what had been very clear market accessibility to now making it really unprofitable.”

The 75 layoffs represent more than half of the plant’s workforce, but Oudman said the SunGold plant, currently the largest lamb processor in Canada, plans to increase that side of its business.

“We’re at just over 1,000 (head of lamb) a week and we would like to increase that upwards of 1,500 a week,” he said. “We still do some beef and some bison on a custom basis, we’ve kept that line going for one day a week. But we’ve reduced the beef kill and processing by approximately 300 head.”

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“It’s a means for people to put money towards the industry. It provides a tool for people who want to put something back into the industry to be able to do it with a tax credit,” said CCA director Bob Lowe, who ranches near Nanton, Alta.

The CCA, whose members voted approval at their semi-annual meeting last month in Calgary, has set up objectives for the foundation, which have been submitted to the Canada Revenue Agency for approval — a crucial step to obtain charitable status.

The foundation’s objectives are to support stewardship practices and conservation actions that conserve the environment, biodiversity and wildlife habitat on working agricultural landscapes; to support education, leadership development, and outreach programs to serve youth involved with beef cattle and grass-range management; and, lastly, to support cattle care research and awareness.

Once approved, the Canadian Cattlemen’s Foundation will form a committee of cattle producers, and representation from the outside community and from within corporate Canada to review requests and submissions for funding.

The foundation is prohibited from funding lobbying efforts or actual beef production, and must be geared toward the wider public good.

“It’s open to a lot of possibilities. It allows people to give back to the industry they grew up in if they want to, and it also gives the industry a form of funding to do research,” said Lowe.

Encouraging and supporting youth is a strong part of the foundation’s mandate, and a goal which resonates personally with Lowe.

“Scholarships and things like that, that will benefit the industry in a time when mostly due to lack of cattle numbers, we’re running out of money,” he said. “Cattle organizations all over are running out of money because cattle numbers are dropping.”

The foundation is expected to support youth interested in pursuing a future in agriculture with scholarships, sponsorships and grants.

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