Meat sector urges Ottawa to ink South Korea free-trade deal, millions at stake

Canada's meat industry says it stands to lose hundreds of millions of dollars a year unless Ottawa moves more quickly to sign a free-trade agreement with South Korea.

Earlier this month, the United States signed such a trade deal, which means its beef and pork producers will face much lower tariffs than their Canadian counterparts.

The Canadian Pork Council warns that without a similar deal, Canada could lose $300 million a year in business, as well as farm and meat processing jobs.

"With the recent ratification of the Korean free-trade agreement by the U.S. Congress, the Canadian red meat industry is very concerned that further delay in concluding Canadian free-trade talks with South Korea will seriously undermine the competitiveness of the pork and beef sectors," said council chairman Jurgen Preugschas.

"It would put more of our producers out of business." More

Meat producers want ban lifted

Free trade . Canadian meat producers want the federal government to resume free trade negotiations with South Korea, after the U.S. ratified a deal with the country last week.

"Almost at the very moment we hope Korea lifts its prohibition on Canadian beef, they will be reducing the tariff on U.S. beef which could well negate our market access gain," Travis Toews, president of the Canadian Cattlemen's Association, said in a statement.

This summer, South Korea said that by the end of the year it would resume imports of Canadian beef from cows under the age of 30 months. It is one of the few remaining countries that has yet to reopen its borders after BSE was discovered in some Canadian cattle in 2003.

The cattlemen's association, as well as the Canadian Pork Council, Canada Pork International and the Canadian Meat Council, want the talks that stalled three years ago restarted, out of concern Canada won't be able to compete with countries whose products have lower tariffs attached. More

Getting to the CORE of foodborne illness outbreaks

FDA establishes foodborne illness outbreak response network Aims at increased coordination, using lessons learned

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) announced today a streamlined, integrated approach to effectively and rapidly respond to human and animal foodborne illness outbreaks: the FDA Coordinated Outbreak Response and Evaluation (CORE) Network.

The CORE Network is comprised of a multi-disciplinary team of epidemiologists, veterinarians, microbiologists, environmental health specialists, emergency coordinators, and risk communications specialists. Working full-time on outbreak prevention and response at headquarters, the CORE is complemented by trained, experienced investigators in FDA field offices nationwide. CORE will coordinate closely with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), and state public health and agriculture agencies in human and animal foodborne illness outbreaks.  More

Test Identifies Red Angus Carriers of Bone Disease

By Sandra Avant
September 29, 2011

A new test that detects a rare and deadly bone disorder in Red Angus is now available to cattle producers, thanks to U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) scientists.
Marble bone disease, also known as osteopetrosis, had not been seen in the United States since the 1960s until it resurfaced in Red Angus cattle three years ago. The birth defect, which affects humans, cattle and other animals, causes abnormal brain and bone marrow cavity development, leading to overly dense, brittle bones. Calves with the mutation usually are stillborn or die soon after birth.

To stop the disease in cattle, scientists at the Agricultural Research Service (ARS) Roman L. Hruska U.S. Meat Animal Research Center (USMARC) in Clay Center, Neb., and the Henry A. Wallace Beltsville Agricultural Research Center (BARC) in Beltsville, Md. collaborated with several university and Red Angus Association of America partners to identify the gene mutation responsible for the disorder. They then developed a DNA diagnostic test that identifies osteopetrosis carriers. More

First ‘Animal Welfare Approved’ restaurant to open

HUDSON, NY – On Oct. 1, the first Animal Welfare Approved Restaurant, Grazin', in Hudson, NY, is set to open for business. As a result, Grazin' will become the first restaurant in the US using only Animal Welfare Approved meat, eggs and dairy products. Restaurants can only earn the distinction of being an "Animal Welfare Approved Restaurant" if all meat, dairy and egg products are from Animal Welfare Approved farms.

The owners and operators of both Grazin' Angus Acres farm in Ghent, NY, and the new Grazin' restaurant are Dan Gibson and his family. When Grazin' opens its doors, customers will consume locally sourced and sustainably produced meals. Signature menu items at the classic 1950s-style stainless steel diner on Warren Street will include eight different burgers; all made using local Grazin' Angus Acres' 100 percent grass fed and finished Black Angus beef served with hand-cut organic fries, plus a range of homemade organic ice creams and house-made organic sodas from an old fashioned fountain. More

Elk farmer in battle with Ottawa bureaucracy over compensation for cull

By Adrian Humphreys

  

Like driftwood logs, two enormous antlers stretch from their sharp tips down four feet to the head of an enormous elk, lying dead on the flat Prairie soil.

These are the "trophy" - an enormous souvenir of the kill that brought corporate executives and celebrities to Rick Alsager's 1,600hectare Saskatchewan farm on the Yellowhead Highway, midway between Saskatoon and Edmonton.

Bagging the best of these trophies, some of the biggest in the world, ran into the tens of thousands of dollars.
Then, on April 16, 2010, one of the elk tested positive for chronic wasting disease and the operation was quarantined by the Canadian Food Inspection Agency. An order to kill the herd soon followed.

The fallout of that cull has not yet settled.

What ostensibly is a battle over compensation has become a culture clash - a head-butting akin to rutting elk - pitting civil servants against a prickly farmer; bureaucrats against a man fed up with government; city-living regulators and taxfunded lawyers against someone who has lived on a farm all his life and represents himself to save the cash.

It is, Mr. Alsager believes, a battle to save the real Canada. More

Big data gaps on animal drugs and antibiotic resistance

Robert Roos  News Editor

Sep 16, 2011 (CIDRAP News) – The US government needs to collect much more data on antibiotic use in food animals and resistant bacteria in animals and retail meat to clarify the possible links between them, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) said in a report released this week.

Government agencies have collected some data, but the data "lack crucial details necessary to examine trends and understand the relationship between use and resistance," the GAO said. The agency also said a shortage of data makes it unclear whether a voluntary strategy the government uses to deal with concerns about older antibiotics is working.

A number of medical, public health, and food safety groups for years have been advocating restrictions on the use of antibiotics in food animals, because of concern that excessive use gives rise to resistant bacteria, which can then spread to humans via food.

As noted in the report, however, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has banned just one antibiotic for use in food animals out of concern about encouraging bacterial resistance. In 2000 the FDA proposed to ban the use of two fluoroquinolones, enrofloxacin and sarafloxacin, in poultry. The maker of sarafloxacin voluntarily withdrew the product, but the enrofloxacin manufacturer opposed the move, and it took the FDA until 2005 to finally ban its use in poultry.

The new GAO report repeats the main thrust of a report issued in 2004, in which the agency called for improved data collection and risk assessment.

"Since GAO's 2004 report, FDA began collecting data from drug companies on antibiotics sold for use in food animals, but the data do not show what species antibiotics are used in or the purpose of their use, such as for treating disease or improving animals' growth rates," the new report says.

"Also, although USDA [US Department of Agriculture] agencies continue to collect use data through existing surveys of producers, data from these surveys provide only a snapshot of antibiotic use practices," it says.

Further, the agencies' data on resistance are not representative of food animals and meat across the nation and, because of a change in sampling method, in some cases have become less representative of the national picture since 2004, the GAO concluded.

The report says that a voluntary process that the FDA implemented in 2003 to assess risks associated with new antibiotics for animals is working reasonably well, but the process for limiting risks related to older antibiotics has problems.

In 2003 the FDA issued guidance to help drug sponsors evaluate potential risks to human health associated with new animal antibiotics. FDA documents say this guidance has been effective in limiting risks, according to the report. In addition, representatives of some producer, public health, and veterinary groups, along with an animal pharmaceutical organization, told the GAO they were "generally satisfied with the risk assessment approach," though they raised some concerns. More