First BC Farm Animal Care Conference Brings Out the Best

The new BC Farm Animal Care Council (BCFACC) held its first conference in Abbotsford on November 10th, bringing a variety of speakers with different perspectives and roles in the food supply chain, all well known in their fields. BCFACC is an organization of producers working with producers to promote a high level of animal care through communication and sharing of knowledge. A wide variety of people attended, including farmers, farm organizations, humane organizations, industry specialists, academics, students and all levels of government.


The keynote speaker was Dr. Temple Grandin, a designer of livestock handling facilities and professor of Animal Science at Colorado State University. Temple is world renowned for her equipment designs that are used in meat plants and her scientific work on reducing handling stress of animals. Her book, Animals in Translation, was a New York Times best seller. She has also written other popular press books, scientific textbooks and chapters and hundreds of industry publications. She has received numerous awards from humane and industry organizations. She has developed animal welfare guidelines for the meat industry and has consulted with McDonald's, Wendy's, Burger King and other companies.

All of these achievements are made more remarkable because Temple was an autistic child. At age two she could not talk and had all the signs of autism. Her mother defied the doctors who wanted her institutionalized, and instead Temple was given speech therapy and intensive teaching. She was mentored by her high school science teacher and her aunt who was a rancher, motivating her to pursue a career as a scientist and livestock equipment designer. HBO produced a movie about Temple's early life and career, and the film won seven Emmy awards, a Golden Globe and a Peabody award.

Temple covered the basics of her work in her presentation, emphasizing how important no-stress handling is and how to accomplish it. She also outlined what is needed to keep animals calm, and how to set up a system that is easy to monitor and audit. She pointed out that people are far removed from food production, and because of the images they see in movies, books and the internet, they view farm animals as pets. She recommended "streaming everything out to the internet" and show what we do. Her advice had already been taken by BCFACC; the entire conference was being videotaped.

Susan Church, who managed Alberta Farm Animal Care Association until her retirement in 2009, spoke on the value and merit of farm animal care councils, mainly for improved animal well-being and better returns for farm businesses. Jackie Wepruk of National Farm Animal Care Council spoke on the ongoing revisions of the Codes of Practice, a science-based consensus process that includes many stakeholders. Ron Maynard, a dairy farmer and Vice President of Dairy Farmers of Canada, spoke on the dairy farmers experience with their new Codes of Practice.

Other industry perspectives were also given. Certified Livestock Transportation was discussed by Kevan Garecki, Bonnie Windsor of Johnston's Packers gave the pork processor's view on animal welfare and its importance to meat quality and animal handling in the plant, and Ken Clark of Overwaitea Food Group talked about the retail end and how they educate consumers on the welfare practices of their suppliers.

Dr. David Fraser, NSERC Industrial Research Chair in Animal Welfare from UBC shared his thoughts on adapting to a changing world. Beyond the nuts and bolts of good animal welfare, which includes husbandry, nutrition, disease prevention and treatment, and low stress handling, he said that animal welfare is now a global political issue as well. He sees the extreme animal welfare view of Europe as a reflection of the European conflict with the industrial revolution. The debate in Europe over industrialization has set the stage for what are seeing today. Opponents say that cities and factories were not beneficial to humans, and the agrarian model of days past, with freedom of the individual and the emotional romanticism that results are important. The other world view that sees cities and factories that relieve people of laborious jobs and increase productivity and wealth as good, is viewed also as progress and improvement, and is "rational". The mid 1900`s were concerned with production, as food security and the shortage of labour were real issues.
As modern advancements allowed for a greater intensification of farming, the term ``factory farming`` cropped up, not by farmers but by their critics.

Society’s pet-centric trends and lack of farm knowledge, and the fact that farmers are not among the majority of voters or consumers, has created more pressure on farmers who raise livestock. The BC Farm Animal Care Council is there to work with producers and give them the resources they need, and to ensure the public has the information they want. The BC Farm Animal Care Line is 877-828-5486.

Kudos to Cargill for showing Oprah how meat is made | barfblog

Kudos to Cargill for showing Oprah how meat is made | barfblog
 This barfblog posting really gets to the core of the question "do you know where your food comes from?". Barfblog.com is a food safety blog produced by Dr. Douglas Powell,  an associate professor of food safety at Kansas State University.  On his site, Dr.Powell is described as "passionate about food, has five daughters, and is an OK goaltender in pickup hockey."  I think that the reference to hockey is code for being a Canadian, and Dr. Powell peppers his blog with many Canadian references (often in a humorous way).

Beef and lamb chilling at Sunterra

Lamb processed on Saturna - inspector on left

     The "do you know where your food comes from" trend was initially exciting for me.  As a meat producer with an education in agriculture and nutrition, I enjoy explaining how we raise our animals and process them.  Recently I visited a lamb feedlot and Sunterra meats in Alberta on a tour with other sheep producers.  Sunterra is a federally inspected plant that processes beef and sheep. It was quite a contrast in scale in comparison to our local slaughter facility on Saturna Island where animals aren't on an assembly line.  Both are similar in other ways - with CFIA inspectors and attention to food safety and a quality product.  The big Cargill plant in the Oprah segment was on another scale - perhaps the largest plant in the world.  It had an animal handling facility based on the design of Temple Grandin, an animal scientist with expertise and special skills in animal handling and animal welfare.

Our lambs are raised and finished on grass

Lambs finished in Alberta feedlot on barley

     Many of our customers ask about how our lambs are raised. We raise and finish our lambs on grass.  We are not organic, because the mild climate increases the incidence of parasites that affect sheep, and they need to be monitored and treated as needed.  Even so, over the years our flock has been selected for the conditions they are living in and the amount of treatments they need have reduced significantly.  The lambs we saw in Alberta were finished in feedlots on locally grown barley.  The lambs are outside in pens, with guardian dogs because of the coyotes. The feed costs are lower in Alberta, and the lambs were in good health and condition.  The young man who ran the feedlot with his dad was very proud of his operation, which finished 4000 lambs at a time.  This was like the feedlot in the Oprah show in the link above - the beef were grain fed in a feedlot, and the animals were in good shape. It really comes down to what you are used to, and what works for your own situation as a livestock producer.   We don't have coyotes in the Gulf Islands, so can leave them outside on the grass all year.  Feedlots are just not seen here, mostly because of the cost of feed, but also because of our climate.  Anyone who feeds groups of livestock provide shelter because our wet climate + lots of animals = mud.   Most people are critical of feedlots because it appears cruel to contain animals in an environment that is not natural or stimulating.  However, if people are going to eat meat and have it priced the way they expect (cheap) this is how most of it is produced.  Livestock are only in the feedlots for short periods of time - not their entire lives - and it is in the feedlot owners best interests to take the best possible care of the animals.  The one we visited had a very good handling facility, where animals are weighed and treated if necessary.

      Sometimes it is apparent that the abundance of negative information gives people some equally negative and sometimes wrong ideas about agriculture.  Thirty years ago the only two books I found on agriculture in a mainstream bookstore were "Merchants of Grain" by Dan Morgan and Three Farms: Making Milk, Meat, and Money from the American Soil by Mark Kramer.  The first book described the seven  families and five companies that control the world's food supplies, and although the book first appeared in 1979 little has changed.  The second book addressed the technological changes that influence modern agriculture and the people who farm.  These themes and players are still written about, thirty odd years later.  Now there are many books about farming and food written by many "experts", and the negative messages often are directed at farmers themselves, and the media jumps in to any hot topic and for the moment, the hot topic is food.  So the way I see it, instead of "let's find out how farmers produce our food"  this movement is saying " let us warn you about what the farmers are doing to our food"!!!!!  Yikes!!!   Well, we are in the thick of lambing - 36 lambs so far - and as I make sure each lamb is with his mom, and his mom is getting her share of the food, I am reminded that we are looking at another 100 ewes yet to lamb.  I have to do this twice a day, seven days a week, rain or shine or snow, whether I am sick or not.  I have to fix fences, harvest the hay, truck it and stack it in the barn, truck in feed, truck the finished lambs to market, sometimes truck lambs to be slaughtered, pick up the packaged lamb and deliver it, and keep predators away.  I have to keep medicines on hand to treat animals when they need it.  And always, I have to just watch them - observe how they behave, what are they trying to tell me? There is more to farming than meets the eye, and that is all part of knowing where your food comes from.  I don't think most people want to know all the details.  They may consider the welfare of the animals, but most put price, quality and safety as a priority.  Animal welfare?  Standards of animal care are an ongoing topic of study and discussion by farmers, animal scientists and veterinarians. If only animals could talk!!

     In an ideal world, people would eat less meat and pay more for it.  It would be healthier for us, and farmers could keep fewer animals which would be better for them and the animals, also.