Sweat like a pig for a bacon sandwich

A Toronto restaurant is offering a 30 per cent discount on bacon sandwiches to customers who run or cycle a course through city streets that is shaped like a pig. Rashers, billed as North America’s only bacon-only shop, is urging exercisers to recoup their “hard-burned” calories by stopping by the shop for a post-workout sandwich.

Major pork processor to ditch gestation stalls

Quebec-based Olymel becomes the latest major processor to bow to consumer pressure to change how it houses pregnant sows

Another major Canadian pork processor has announced it will ban the use of gestations stalls in the coming years. The Quebec-based Olymel says it will phase out gestation stalls over the next decade. “We’ve been thinking about this for a long time, we’ve been talking to our partners and reading expert opinion,” said Olymel spokesman


1992 April Fool’s spoof no joke in 2013

The following contains excerpts from a Manitoba Co-operator editorial about “Europeanized” pigs running wild in rural Manitoba that ran as an April Fool’s spoof in 1992. While the anecdotes contained in the article are fabricated, it turns out they aren’t that far out in today’s context. According to news reports, Manitoba Conservation officials shot four



Curbing farm use of antibiotics heats up again

Ontario Medical Association says incidence of antibiotic-resistant bacteria is on the rise and must be stopped

The Ontario Medical Association is calling on government to impose sweeping restrictions on non-essential farm and other uses of medicines before bacterial resistance to life-saving antibiotics threatens human health. Growing resistance to antibiotics endangers “one of the most fundamental and life-saving tools in medicine,” the association warns in a report entitled ‘When Antibiotics Stop Working.’

Canada considers next move in COOL controversy

Canada is still considering what U.S. exports it might target for retaliatory tariffs if Washington fails to comply with a World Trade Organization ruling against its country-of-origin labelling law, says Agriculture Minister Gerry Ritz. “We’re looking at all our options, but we don’t want to penalize our allies in the U.S. livestock and meat-processing sectors



Continued uncertainty for hog producers in 2013

After a six-year period of poor profitability, Canadian producers are on a knife edge, especially those in the West. With the hog price at around $1.45 and production costs of at least $170 per hog, they have been bleeding cash over the winter. And now the latest census data suggests that the supply of hogs


Furloughs for meat inspectors expected to start mid-July

Washington / Reuters / All U.S. meat inspectors will be furloughed on the same days as the federal meat safety agency, a top USDA official said, leading to spotty meat shortages in the summer and fall as automatic spending cuts shave $53 million off the agency’s budget. The furloughs, expected to total 11 days, are

Stabilization talks continue with province

Manitoba hog producers are still in limbo Manitoba pork producers are still waiting to hear whether a proposed hog stabilization program will move ahead. The loan program, proposed by the Manitoba Pork Council, needs the backing of the provincial government to go forward. “I think we’re getting close to a point where they have to