About 2,000 pigs perished in a storm-fueled power outage at a HyLife farm site near Kola on April 24, the company confirmed.
“During extremely challenging and lengthy weather conditions, which resulted in highway closures, travel advisories and dangerous driving conditions, our employees were not able to access one of our sites,” said Dave Penner, HyLife’s chief operating officer of farms in a statement sent to the Co-operator.
“Despite numerous extensive contingencies, power outages resulted in existing infrastructure, backup generator, and phone notification systems failures,” Penner said.
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Penner said the company has reviewed its barn operations during inclement weather and has revised its procedures.
“We are committed to any corrective action necessary,” Penner said.
“This is extremely unfortunate,” said Cam Dahl, general manager of the Manitoba Pork Council. “We work very hard as an industry to ensure never happens. When something does happen, I think it’s incumbent on us to look back and say ‘what do we need to do differently?’”
Dahl said it’s incredibly rare to have both primary and backup power fail. He called the event a “perfect storm” of conditions.
As a company that ships pigs to federally-inspected abattoirs, Hylife is required to have backup power sources for its barns, Dahl said. This is part of the national PigSAFE and PigCARE programs.
According to the 2018 PigSAFE producer manual, operations are required to have contingency plans in place in case of a power outage, mechanical failure or failure of water supply.
Plans must include means to control temperature and ventilation in these cases, and to supply water if water is cut off.
Manitoba Pork will review these procedures to see if anything can be done better, or if they can advise farmers Dahl said.
