The disease has been a problem since the 1960s, but scientists had no idea how to control it, said Matheus de Oliviera Costa, an associate professor with the University of Saskatchewan’s Western College of Veterinary Medicine and an expert in swine health.

After years of research, Costa and his team have discovered new information about pig ear necrosis and how to control it.

WHY IT MATTERS: Learning more about the specific causes of a painful livestock ailment is the necessary first step toward treatment and control.

Through clinical research at the U of S, Costa and his team identified a source for the disease — a common bacteria called Fusobacterium necrophorum, found in the mouth and gastrointestinal tract of many mammals, including humans.

Pig ear necrosis occurs when bacteria is transferred via saliva through biting or chewing ears.

The disease leads to tissue death on the ear, said Costa. It looks terrible as parts of the animal’s ear rot away.

“It’s usually exploited by animal activists as a cause of mutilation in commercial farms, which in severe cases, yes, they become mutilated by disease, but not due to neglect or anything,” he said.

‘Multifactorial’

Since the early years of the disease, there has been a long list of suggested causes, ranging from mycotoxins to ventilations to other infectious agents, including PCV2 and porcine circovirus, which can target the lymphoid tissues and lead to immune suppression.

“It’s always been kind of a guess, and I think that’s why we call it a multifactorial disease. We didn’t know what caused it,” he said.

To combat the disease, veterinarians told their clients to check ventilation protocols and improve hygiene and health in the hog barns.

Sometimes the disease would disappear, and other times it would not.

Pig ear necrosis compromises the pigs and slows down their growth and meat production.

“Animals will grow slower than they normally would. They are more susceptible to diseases. They have an open wound,” he said.

Sometimes these wounds can lead to abscesses that can lead to further complications.

Bully pigs

Through their research, Costa and his team found pig ear necrosis is caused by a flesh-eating bacteria that destroys the tissue of the ear, which dies and falls off.

“It’s not something that happens overnight. It takes days for a piece of tissue to die like that,” said Costa.

Humans who have had necrosis describe even a small wound as excruciatingly painful, so it is likely extremely painful for pigs as well.

The disease usually shows up in nursery pigs. The lesions develop a couple of weeks out of the nursery stage, and by the time the pigs are grower-finishers, they will have severe presentation and will be missing parts of the ear.

The disease does not spread beyond the ears.

“For you to see the disease, first you need to have a lesion in the ear, and that’s usually just pig biting. With pigs in a pen, there’s usually a bully pig. The bully pig will run around chewing on ears,” he said.

The research team doesn’t have the evidence to support this, but they suspect if a pig bites another pig’s ear, they can inject the bacteria into the pen mates’ ears that can lead to necrosis.

Fusobacterium necrophorum is so prevalent in pigs that removing it completely would not be possible.

As part of their research, the research team travelled to farms and talked to producers and veterinarians about pig ear necrosis. They collected samples from pigs in barns with ear necrosis and used DNA sequencing to find out what was causing the necrosis.

“That essentially resulted in a list of potential causes, and we developed a model to attempt to recreate the disease,” said Costa.

The team tried multiple causes until they found Fusobacterium necrophorum. The bacteria cannot be eliminated because it is so prevalent.

Patent pending

Before they even identified the bacteria responsible for pig ear necrosis, the research team had developed a vaccine to immunize pigs against the pathogen. The vaccine is still considered a “research vaccine,” so it is not licensed and has not been approved by the Canadian Food Inspection Agency. However, a patent has been filed.

“It still must go through all the steps, but this vaccine candidate has been shown in our research trials under control conditions to reduce the amount of lesions to 50 per cent, so we have 50 per cent fewer pigs develop necrosis compared to our vaccinated pigs,” Costa said.

“And I’m hoping as we progress with this research that we’re going to be able to improve that efficacy number so we see fewer lesions. But moving forward, the vaccine probably means that fewer antibiotics are going to be used. We’re going to have fewer pigs developing ear necrosis, so better welfare for those animals. Hopefully that’s going to be a win for the industry (and society) because we’re going to be reducing the number of cases of animals that may not be perceived as having proper welfare.”

Vaccinating the animals will improve their welfare and reduce the amount of pig necrosis cases.

Producers can try to reduce pig ear necrosis by making sure there is enough enrichment in the pens so ear biting is not as frequent.

The post Scientists discover cause of pig ear necrosis appeared first on Manitoba Co-operator.

“Oftentimes, when I ask people how their ventilation is in their barn they tell me pigs aren’t chilled, they’re not heat stressed in the summer. And that’s not ventilation. That’s temperature,” said speaker Nathaniel Stas, technical services director at the Pig Improvement Company (PIC). “And temperature and ventilation, even though they’re heavily correlated, they can battle against each other.”

WHY IT MATTERS: Lack of balance between temperature and ventilation can hit at pig growth efficiency, sow lactation and feed intake.

If the temperature is too hot, there are more gasses output from pigs as they grow, such as ammonia, CO2, and hydrogen sulfide.

Stas also urged producers to remember the pigs’ natural body heat and how that will increase in warmer barns.

He equated growing pigs to teenagers who leave the house without a jacket when the temperature is below freezing. Both are at key points of growth, and growing increases warmth. As such, he suggested barns should be set to 10-14 Celsius instead of 20 C, which will make the pigs much happier in their active growth stage working to convert feed into muscle or, in the case of sows, into piglets.

READ MORE: Pigs have their say when setting the temperature

“Per pound or per kilogram of animal, a young pig is more efficient … it converts heat faster than a heavy weight animal, and therefore it produces more heat per kilogram of animal,” Stas explained.

Meanwhile, he noted, “Ventilation in a farrowing room or a nursery is even more critical, even more fine tuned, because that pig is producing that much more heat, more gasses because of that per kilogram or per pound of animal (heat generation principle).”

Ventilation

Ventilation comes as a need to control humidity and the gasses given off by the animals that rob oxygen and make it hard for the pigs to breath. If the farmer is having difficulty stomaching the air in the barn, then the pigs probably need a change too.

Fans, soffit vents, and gable openings all constitute ventilation, but fresh air intakes are also required. The fresh air mixes with the air of the barn and all must be exhausted out at the proper speed and with an adequate volume of air, calculated at cubic feet per minute.

Air is meant to move like water, Stas noted. If it’s moving too slowly around the fresh air inlet or there’s too many obstacles, other sections of the barn become dead zones with poor quality air. Air moving too quickly, and the areas become too cold, causing inefficiencies as both the heaters use more power and the pigs use more feed to stay warm instead of grow.

READ MORE: Building smart barns for smart farms

Air speed should be measured frequently. Air is a constant and easy to measure as the distance of the barn never changes, he told the crowd. Air moves two feet for every 100 feet per minute of airspeed that a fan is set to.

“So most farms are going to be 600 to 800 feet per minute,” Stas said. “That means that air is going to go 12 to 16 feet before it starts to tumble and roll.”

For it all to work effectively, adequate air pressure is required. A vacuum must be created by the fans and air intakes for proper flow. If not, whether coming in by holes and gaps or open doors, air becomes “sporadic” and will ricochet in any direction, making ventilation ineffective.

“A roll of duct tape and a can of spray foam can be a producer’s best friend,” Stas noted.

Test the pressure via static pressure monitors or by opening and closing the door. If the door slams shut, pressure is too high, but if it doesn’t have any pull or drag on it, pressure is too low.

The other key to an effective system is equipment maintenance. Stas warned that an eighth of an inch of dust on a fan can rob it of up to 40 per cent of its power. Dusting and testing belts and motors plus cleaning soffit vents can be a game changer on the ventilation system.

Humidity

Along with ventilation and air speed, Stas identified humidity levels as a top priority.

“Humidity is a great proxy to determine if air quality is good,” he said. “We can measure gasses. It’s more expensive to measure gasses but if our humidity is good in our barn — and by good, I mean 50 to 65 per cent in any swine facility — then we’re doing a pretty good job of ventilating that barn anytime it’s cold outside or cooler than we want it to be inside.”

Humidity should be measured each day, at the same time, just like temperature. Using a rolling average from every three days, adjustments to ventilation should be made. If humidity is higher than the recommended 65 per cent, for example, ventilation would need to be increased.

Cost of business

To producers, this may sound like extra work and an additional cost of fuel, but Stas said these should be considered typical costs of production. Without necessary adjustments the pigs growth aren’t growing as much, and therefore aren’t maximizing their potential as income drivers.

“What we’ve come up with for research and in the information we’ve collected, is for every 15 per cent added humidity, it’s about three per cent (effect) in average daily gain,” he said.

“And you can correlate that to the sows as well, because it’s a water-to-feed ratio impact. The humidity goes up, pigs don’t fill as well, they can’t breathe as good, and so their intake goes down.”

The post Get the best air in your hog barn appeared first on Manitoba Co-operator.

The province rolled back its own conditional use requirements in June, part of a list of changes made to the Planning Act around large-scale livestock operations. Prior to the changes, the province required a conditional use hearing for any proposed hog barn with 300 animal units or over.

Municipalities are now expected to set their own size limits on conditional use, and any existing conditional use bylaws had to be reviewed within a year of the, now passed, Bill 19 coming into effect. The province argued the changes would give municipalities greater control over hog barn development in their region.

The same bill did away with mandatory conditional use hearings or technical reviews for hog barn expansions, as long as the expansion increased capacity by 15 per cent or less.

Merv Starzyk, mayor of the RM of Yellowhead, says his council has not reviewed conditional use bylaws yet. The item appeared briefly during one council meeting, he said, although no decisions were made.

“We will review it — see how the new council as a group feels and we’ll deal with it as such,” the newly elected mayor said.

Starzyk jumped from a regular council seat to the head of the table after municipal elections this October.

Hog barn expansions and, by extension, the municipality’s conditional use policy, came into the limelight this fall after advocacy group Hog Watch raised concerns about a recently expanded hog operation.

The group is arguing that the hog barn should not have been approved without a conditional use hearing, exceeds the 300 animal unit threshold, and was approved prior to the changes to the Planning Act, when provincial rules on conditional use hearings were still in force.

Hog Watch was vocally critical of the Planning Act changes in early 2018. The group argued that removing conditional use hearings, along with new rules that would require 25 voters or half of those with neighbouring properties to object before a project needed additional approval proceedings, would curb local feedback.

“Bill 19 will silence the public,” the group argued in a published statement in April. “It will allow municipal leaders to get rid of conditional use hearings and provincial technical reviews for factory hog barns. If local politicians take this route, the province will have the only and final say on where hog factories can be built. The Government of Manitoba is and has been both a promoter and regulator of the hog industry.”

The Manitoba Pork Council expects most municipalities will stick with the 300 animal unit threshold.

“Just because they review it doesn’t mean they’ll change it; some may even lower it,” Michael Teillet saidfrom the Manitoba Pork Council. “However, we anticipate most RMs will follow the path of least resistance and keep the threshold at the currently required 300 (animal units).”

The Pork Council is preparing a series of public information sheets and pamphlets in light of recent policy changes around hog barns.

At the same time, Teillet said, they have been in contact with the Association of Manitoba Municipalities, “to discuss any issues related to the sector.”

The AMM does not track how many RMs have already reviewed their bylaws since June.

“Although AMM doesn’t comment on individual applications regarding hog barn expansions, we are aware of the recent changes made to the review and approval process for large-scale livestock operations included in Bill 19. We have not heard of any concerns from our members about the issue and we are working with Manitoba Municipal Relations on communicating this information to our membership,” Denys Volkov, communications manager with the Association of Manitoba Municipalities, said.

The post RMs near halfway mark on hog barn rule revisit appeared first on Manitoba Co-operator.

From falling numbers of PED cases to a modest barn-building boom and new trade deals that will stabilize and expand markets, long-term trends look positive, the group says.

Why it matters: The industry needs to stay focused on the future in the midst of some short-term trade hiccups that have eroded prices and threatened to undermine confidence in the sector.

“One has to have confidence in the future,” Andrew Dickson, MPC general manager, told the Co-operator during a break in the meeting. “Otherwise you might as well stay home in bed and pull the sheets over your head, and as an industry we won’t do that.”

PED cases down

Last year at this time, there were 80 porcine epidemic diarrhea cases on the books. So far in 2018, they number 14.

The sector is still on high alert, said George Matheson, MPC chair and a farmer in the Selkirk area. He said the lower numbers are the dividends of an investment made during the height of the outbreak last year when MPC hired a swine health program manager to take proactive action and ensure clear industry communication.

“I think it’s one of the best decisions we’ve ever made as an organization,” Matheson told the meeting in his introductory remarks.

Jenelle Hamblin, who took on the role last fall, said the ability to share information quickly has been invaluable, in particular the Manitoba Co-ordinated Disease Response (MCDR) system that uses electronic communication to share disease information confidentially within the industry.

Communication in a disease outbreak can help limit spread of the disease to other farms and can also help affected producers get the support they need, Hamblin said.

However, the system needs co-operation from producers to be effective. Producers need to sign an MCDR confidentiality agreement that gives MPC the ability to share their information with other producers in case of an outbreak. While pork producers were initially fearful, Hamblin said the system won them over by reducing PED cases. More than three-quarters of the producers in the southeast corner of Manitoba, the region hardest hit, are now participating.

“But here’s what we have to fill in,” she told the meeting, flashing up a map of the many premises outside that hot zone that have yet to sign up. “I really urge producers to sign the agreements.”

Matheson seconded that sentiment, noting the industry worldwide is now fretting about the emergence of African swine fever. While no cases have yet been found in North America, he cautioned producers they’d need to be ready if they were.

“This is not good news for us,” Matheson said.

Truck washing

Dickson said he remains hopeful the industry can negotiate changes to the livestock truck washing regulations, which could also help control disease.

Right now, trucks returning from the U.S. are legally required to wash out before crossing into Canada, which may ironically be exposing them to disease at the U.S. washes because water at those stations is recycled.

Dickson said the transport industry “has little faith” in the U.S. washes and so rewashes and disinfects once back in Canada. The washes also aren’t necessarily in convenient locations for trucks bound back to Canada, which makes the trips logistically less efficient.

“The transporters are very eager to move this forward,” Dickson said.

The stumbling block remains federal regulations but Dickson said a recent meeting with the head of the CFIA leaves him optimistic.

“He seemed sympathetic to the situation,” Dickson said.

Rebuilding boom

As Manitoba’s hog facilities near the end of their life cycles, loosened provincial regulations have enabled the sector to begin rebuilding, Dickson said.

The single most important change was the removal in 2017 of a requirement for anaerobic digesters to treat manure in any new barn, he said.

Dickson told the meeting that over the past year 8,350 sow places have been added, 35,800 finisher places have been built or are under construction. As well, municipal councils have approved a further 63,300 and a further 81,500 are at some stage of the planning process.

“We’re looking at the addition of 160,000 total placements by the end of 2019 or early 2020,” Dickson said.

One MPC initiative that’s played a role in smoothing the way for this effort is the Swine Industry Development Corporation. It provides a resource for producer, investors and others looking to build and contracts with consultants to provide services at cost. It is, in essence, a one-stop shop to help get barns off the drawing board and into operation.

So far it’s had four contracts since beginning operation in February of 2018 and garnered praise from pork industry observers such as market analyst Kevin Grier.

Dickson said there’s little doubt it helps prospective barn builders navigate the process by anticipating and addressing potential objections early in the process.

“In once case I know the hearing was scheduled for 8:30 in the morning,” Dickson said. “By 9:15 it was all wrapped up and the councillors were congratulating him on his proposal.”

Working through the problems beforehand is going to be very important, Dickson said, especially now that municipal governments are in a more prominent role in the process.

“There are more voters out there who aren’t hog producers than are,” Dickson said. “It’s a math thing.”

Trade triumphs

In recent months the pork sector has been on the receiving end of trade troubles.

U.S. hog producers found themselves the target of tariffs from China and Mexico, and the trouble quickly seeped north of the border. Canadian prices are essentially based on U.S. pork prices, with the currency difference taken into account.

Now that the USMCA agreement has quelled fears of a NAFTA meltdown and the CPTPP is opening doors to Asian markets, Matheson said producers are hopeful the worst is behind them. Dickson agreed the agreements would help.

“We hope the USMCA means the Mexican tariffs will disappear fairly quickly and the natural flow of pork from the U.S. to Mexico will resume,” Dickson said.

He said the CPTPP agreement had two key wins for Canada. It gives the country continued favourable access to the important and established market of Japan. It also opened the door to building markets in Vietnam, a nation with three times the population of Canada and a voracious appetite for pork, he said.

“We know that it’s important when it comes to developing nations to get into the market early and work to develop it,” Dickson said.

The trade-related pricing woes did spark some talk of a made-in-Canada pricing mechanism for pork, but Matheson cautioned that would be difficult.

“When you’ve really only got one customer, you don’t have much bargaining power,” he said. “I think it’s a bit of a ‘be careful what you wish for’ situation.”

The post Pork industry chalking up wins appeared first on Manitoba Co-operator.

The wrangle over the facility has revealed grey areas in the regulations which some feel are open to interpretation.

Capacity in question

In a September submission to the RM of Yellowhead council, advocacy group Hog Watch argued that the facility exceeds 300 animal units. It says that at the time the expansion was built, the Planning Act still required any barn over that size to be designated as conditional use. There was no conditional use hearing registered for the expansion, the submission says.

Why it matters: The debate behind how regulations are interpreted may have implications for new and expanded hog barns and whether they fall under the 300-animal unit threshold. Being below that threshold exempts them from some regulations.

“The question is one of public policy,” Ruth Pryzner of Hog Watch said. “What’s good public policy and what’s good regulation? And good regulation is not saying, ‘Go ahead and build a barn, and then when you get caught, then you get to fix the problem.’ Saying that sends a really dangerous message to the hog operators.”

That section of the Planning Act was removed as of June, part of changes that allowed barns to increase up to 15 per cent without additional hearings, as long as they stayed in compliance with municipal bylaws. The municipality currently requires a conditional use hearing for operations producing 400 or more animal units, according to public documents cited by Hog Watch.

Hog Watch based its claims on the barn’s 17,900-square-foot layout (a number provided by municipal Access and Privacy Officer and CAO, Nadine Gapka). According to their submission, the group then took published plans from a comparatively sized barn off the Manitoba Pork Council website, to estimate penning area. That space was then divided by per-pig space requirements laid down by the 2014 National Farm Animal Care Council guidelines.

The group argues that the addition, added to the existing facility, would bring animal units up to anywhere from 408.4 to 422.4 animal units and is pressing the local RM council to file a complaint with Manitoba Sustainable Development.

Getting a count

For its part the local council says it’s not ignoring the situation.

“We did talk to him,” Reeve Don Yanick said. “We asked if we could find an independent person to go and actually do a physical count of the hogs, because (by) the information he’s given us, he’s under the 300 animal units… as council we are saying that we would like to actually send somebody in and verify that. We’re trying to set that up right now.”

Two veterinarians have so far denied the municipality’s request, citing logistical issues with getting an accurate count, council heard Oct. 23.

The farm’s engineering firm, South-Man Engineering, has disputed Hog Watch’s numbers. In an Oct. 5 letter to the RM of Yellowhead’s CAO, the firm argued that the barn is purposefully stocked lower to improve animal husbandry.

“The intent of the finisher barn added to the existing weanling barns is for the purpose of raising and selecting gilts which are then transported as replacement breeding stock to other existing sow facilities,” the letter read. “This gilt raising and selection process is different than a commercial finisher facility in that additional space per pig is required to facilitate a healthier and more productive environment which ultimately impacts on the animal’s reproductive ability in the future.”

The new barn gives about 11.5 square feet per pig compared to the nine square feet typically seen in commercial operations, the letter said.

Likewise, the letter argued, the original weanling barn stocks about 500 weanlings per room for a maximum 4,000 animals, compared to the 4,800 animals it was built to house.

According to the province, the farmer in question applied to expand his 132-animal unit barn in 2017, bringing it up to 297 animal units, a number also cited by South-Man Engineering.

Count capacity

Hog Watch, however, argues animal units should be based on barn capacity, rather than physical count of pigs.

“The way to do it is to say, this is what the capacity of the barn is, this is the maximum number of animals it can hold to be compliant with the Animal Care Act and that’s how many animal units that barn can hold, and then you regulate on that basis, otherwise we’re in this back and forth. You can make different claims,” Pryzner said.

Pryzner says she is concerned with on ongoing enforcement, should animal units be calculated on the number of pigs in the facility at any one point in time. A few dozen additional animals would tip the operation over 300 animal units, she argued, something she says is a “marginal” amount.

Michael Teillet, Manitoba Pork Council sustainable development manager, says barn approvals have never been based on barn size.

“Barn design, configuration of pens, types of animals, the owner’s wishes as to how much space to give their animals, etc., all make it impossible to determine the number of animals in any barn based merely on barn size,” he said.

He also argued that farmers are purposefully overshooting on new barn size in the anticipation that animals will get bigger over the next few decades.

In terms of enforcement, Teillet argued that municipal approvals are based on the assumption that an owner will follow the law and municipal officials, “don’t routinely check these things unless there is a legitimate reason to do so.”

A question of manure

Hog Watch has also accused the barn of building without adequate manure storage and without a manure management plan, a requirement it argues was in force at the time that the barn was built.

The group says when the barn was built, a manure management plan was a requirement for any barn, regardless of size. A document from the Manitoba Pork website regarding historic nutrient management practices stated that any barn established or expanded after Oct. 31, 2009, until the passage of the Red Tape Reduction and Government Efficiency Act in November 2017, required a manure management plan. Hog Watch claims the barn was expanded during that period and therefore should be covered by those regulations.

To back up its claim, the group compared the estimated storage surplus (derived from figures in the existing barn’s initial approval and waste production estimates from the Farm Practices Guidelines for Pig Producers in Manitoba), with new waste expected from their estimated barn capacity figures. The group’s submission set that excess manure at 962,000 to 1.1 million gallons over current capacity per year.

According to the same letter from South-Man Engineering, an application was made to expand manure storage to the required 400 days’ worth of storage capacity. The application was completed Aug. 28, it said, but only recently arrived at Manitoba Sustainable Development due to a clerical error. Current capacity allows for 253 days of storage, the firm said, something it argues will carry the barn over the winter if the expanded storage can’t be completed until spring.

Hog Watch says it intends to take matters up with the province itself if the RM chooses not to press the complaint.

The barn operators could not be reached for comment.

The post Hog barn expansion poses questions appeared first on Manitoba Co-operator.

Bill 19, The Planning Amendment Act (Improving Efficiency in Planning) proposes changes to how livestock operations are approved by municipalities, and other matters related to zoning bylaws and appeals.

Under the bill, owners of livestock barns needing upgrades or reconstruction will be able to proceed without requiring more municipal hearings.

The legislation proposes increasing the minor variance threshold, so producers can replace barns — and even increase their size between 10 and 15 per cent — so long as their operations are in compliance with existing bylaws, said Municipal Relations Minister Jeff Wharton.

It would also allow authorities of municipalities to grant zoning bylaw requirements such as square footage, height and parking spaces without need for additional council hearings.

• Read more: Uncertainty puts brakes on hog barns

The rationale is that many barns are now nearing the end of their lifespan and need replacing so this will expedite the approval process, he said.

Nothing with respect to environmental protections is changing, he said.

“We haven’t done anything with the environmental process,” he said. “It remains the same.”

In a news release Minister of Agriculture Ralph Eichler called the proposed legislation “a balanced approach to the livestock review and approval process that improves animal safety and maintains a high standard of environmental accountability.”

A spokesperson for Manitoba Pork said the hog industry welcomes the change because it will eliminate what’s long been viewed as “a senseless flaw” in the existing act.

Currently, even minor barn upgrades trigger lengthy review processes, said Mike Teillet, manager of sustainable development with Manitoba Pork.

• Read more: Bill 24 to allow new hog barns

“We had a situation just recently where a guy was literally adding a kitchen (to the barn) for his staff and he had to go through this whole process of a conditional use technical review process, because he was adding on to the barn,” he said.

This also simplifies the process for producers eyeing expansions to improve the barn’s structural environment to accommodate not more but larger animals. Sows produce larger litters and pigs are bigger animals than when hog barns were first constructed in the mid-1990s.

“What’s happening is that the barns are becoming cramped for space,” Teillet said.

“This will allow farmers to expand their barns for animal welfare purposes without having to go through the full bureaucratic process.”

Teillet said the hog industry anticipates as much as 75 per cent or more hog barns will require major renovations over the next five to eight years.

• Read more: Development corporation to assist hog barn builders

Another change in the proposed legislation is to harmonize hearing process requirements with those already established in The Municipal Act, Wharton said.

The change will set a minimum requirement of 25 voters objecting to a development to trigger a conditional use hearing. Currently, even if one person objects, further hearings are required during the adoption or amendment of zoning bylaws.

Association of Manitoba Municipalities (AMM) president Chris Goertzen said municipalities want this change.

“This allows it to be clear and concise and it also creates a clear understanding for the public for what is required,” he said.

“This is going to reduce the amount of files that go to the municipal board and it leaves more decisions with municipalities.”

A secondary provision of the bill which sets 50 per cent of those notified of public hearings to trigger further proceedings is meant to address situations where, in thinly populated areas, there may not necessarily be 25 voters to register objections, Goertzen noted.

In that case, if, for example 10 persons are notified, any five registering an objection would trigger a municipal board hearing.

“Obviously municipalities will clearly hold hearings in good faith and make decisions appropriately,” Goertzen said. “It’s just that this leaves decisions in the hands of municipalities more readily than it does a politically appointed board.”

Under the bill an applicant can also make an appeal to the municipal board in the event of a rejection or conditions imposed; presently there are no provisions for appeal.

Other changes would include:

• Setting a 30-day timeline for municipal board reviews of development plan bylaws;
• Introducing the option for members of the public attending planning hearings to opt to receive notice by email;
• Introducing a technical review pro-cess for aggregate quarry proposals;
• Requiring municipalities to review their livestock operations zoning bylaws within one year; and
• Dissolving the Interdepartmental Planning Board.

The board has not met since 2014, Wharton said.

The post Province proposes changes to approval process for livestock operations appeared first on Manitoba Co-operator.

In perhaps one of the biggest wins for the industry, 2017 ended the freeze on new barns, something industry has fought for since a rule requiring anaerobic digesters in new barns was first introduced in 2006 and expanded province-wide five years later.

Barns became prohibitively expensive to build as a result of the requirement, industry argued, and new barns over the next decade reached only single digits.

Requirements relaxed in 2015, assuming new barns could meet a list of other conditions such as two-cell manure lagoons and nutrient monitoring.

This year, the Manitoba government passed Bill 24 to remove the requirement entirely.

No building boom

The province will “definitely” see more hog barns now that Bill 24 is through the Legislature, Manitoba Pork Council (MPC) chair George Matheson said.

“It’s going to be slow, there’s no doubt about it,” he cautioned. “That’s mainly due to return on investments. To build a barn, it’s extremely expensive and, of course, that’s a depreciating asset.”

MPC hopes its new development corporation will speed up that process. The corporation will guide producers through barn approval and building, the council says.

Hylife Foods already plans to expand. The farm-to-fork company is looking at new barn sites near Killarney, residents heard during an open house in November.

MPC expects hog numbers to reach eight million this year, although general manager Andrew Dickson says more is needed to bring processors up to full capacity.

Manitoba’s farm building code was also repealed this year and rolled into provincial codes as part of red-tape reduction efforts. MPC hailed the move, and the addition of a low-human occupancy class. The new class comes with fewer fire restrictions, including fewer smoke alarms and exits.

Mike Teillet, MPC manager of sustainable development, said the new codes line up with Canada’s national farm building code, although the changes came under fire from advocacy groups, that pointed to Manitoba’s less than stellar record with barn fires and argued that fire protections shouldn’t be rolled back.

More barns may be incoming, but Matheson does not expect those changes to speed up gestation stall phase-out.

Producers have until 2024 to change sow housing, but Matheson says many are waiting for a 2019 decision to clarify loose housing or equivalent exercise rules.

“I don’t think that any producer I’ve met is against loose housing, it’s just being forced to do it and the expense required by 2024, that’s what worries them as much as anything,” he said.

Dealing with criticism

With the wins, came backlash. This year saw a resurgence of activist group Hog Watch. The group strongly protested building code changes, pointing to a then-recent barn fire that had claimed 3,000 animals near New Bothwell.

The group returned to oppose Bill 24, including a protest, day of action and speaking events.

• Read more: Hog production faces opposing ideologies

Among its arguments, Hog Watch argued that Bill 24 would cut back on environmental protections while encouraging more intensive livestock production, a proverbial smoking gun for many in the group, who argued that intensive livestock production also intensifies waste, nutrient stress and water quality concerns.

Lake Winnipeg was, once again, a main subject of debate. Nutrient loads and related water quality issues and algae blooms have been a perennial problem and were a driving factor behind the anaerobic digester requirement in 2006. Federal programs have since got involved, although a report this year from Environment and Climate Change Canada says phosphorus levels dropped less than one per cent, and over half of that from Niverville’s municipal lagoon closure, despite five years and millions of dollars.

“In Manitoba, we have a number of sources for nitrogen and phosphorus,” Eva Pip, a retired biology professor, said during a Hog Watch event in late 2017. “In rural Manitoba, factory farms have become a ubiquitous sight… and many of them are at unbelievable density, for example in Hanover municipality, which is completely supersaturated now with hog barns.”

Export-based economics and rural decline also made the group’s talking points.

Hog Watch verbally clashed with MPC several times through the year.

“Hog Watch, I think, has been very unfair to us,” Matheson said. “There’s no doubt about it that Lake Winnipeg is sick and needs help from all citizens, but Hog Watch always forgets that the drainage into Lake Winnipeg is a huge watershed.”

The Lake Winnipeg Basin draws from four provinces and four states and the Manitoba government now estimates that half of the lake’s nutrient load comes from upstream.

“Lake Winnipeg needs our attention, but for Hog Watch to focus on us and say that we were the prime cause of those problems is very unfair,” Matheson said.

The head of the Manitoba Pork Council accused the group of being anti-livestock in general.

Other rural Manitobans have taken exception to MPC’s plans to tackle Manitoba’s Planning Act next year, something that would cut back the approval process for building a barn.

Critics, however, have worried that those plans might cut out municipalities on issues like odour management.

Matheson acknowledged those concerns.

Responsible

The pork council hopes to see up to 4,000-head barns, double the current size, he said, but added that MPC hopes to work with municipalities and the province.

“We have to be responsible citizens,” Matheson said. “Western Manitoba especially, the Interlake as well, (there are) vast areas where these barns can build, but they definitely have to be put in the right place where there’s an adequate amount of cultivated land to apply the manure and also, lots of buffers between that barn and residences that could be impacted by these odours.”

MPC admits that reducing barn fires and odour mitigation both need to be improved.

It has turned to the Manitoba Farm Safety Program, which launched infrared barn inspections this year after the New Bothwell fire.

Keith Castonguay, Manitoba Farm Safety Program director, says infrared cameras will identify hot spots from bad wiring before a potential short. Wiring is a major cause of barn fires, both Castonguay and Matheson say. Corroded wires from high humidity or corrosive gases may be hard to detect inside walls.

Fighting disease

Barns in the southeast saw their PEDv year on record. The virus, which causes dehydration and diarrhea, is lethal for piglets and claims 80-100 per cent of naive weanlings.

A total 80 sites came down with the virus this year, eight times more than all previous years combined. Over a million animals were put under surveillance and over 200 premises sat in the five-kilometre buffer zones around each infected site.

Thirty of those cases were due to animal movement.

“Those were a couple of different things,” Glen Duizer, veterinarian with Manitoba’s chief veterinary office, said. “Certainly, in some cases, in 18 of them, the movement happened prior to clinical signs being observed in a herd.”

In others, infected pigs were deliberately moved to a farm due to space issues or pigs were assumed to be non-shedding, moved, and then relapsed.

“One of the things that we’ve learned from this disease is that, whether it is because piglets or pigs in nurseries have become positive with PED — we don’t quite get the disease spread across the entire farm — or because there is some low level of carrier state that exists in some of these animals, we can go weeks after a group of pigs have recovered from PED. We can even have multiple negative tests, but there is a risk that those animals will start shedding the virus at a low level again, in some cases four to six to even eight weeks after they’ve recovered from the virus,” Duizer said.

The outbreak changed how many farms and transport staff approached biosecurity, the veterinarian said. Wash procedure came under the microscope while the sector introduced dedicated transport routes for cull sows coming from large assembly yards.

The fever-pitch concern over PEDv has since cooled. There have been no new cases since Oct. 24. Twenty-four infected sites no longer show clinical signs and an equal number are now presumptive negative, with both animals and barns cleared of the disease, although it may be lingering in manure storage.

“The lagoons and the manure-holding facilities will probably always have a trace of it for quite some time,” Matheson said. “So, yes, things didn’t start off quite well, but you know, all things considered, we did very well. At one point, I would’ve said it’s next to impossible to eradicate it from the province. Now I think there is a possibility that we can, in fact, do that.”

Duizer expects a number of transitional farms will become presumptive negative over the next month. Some have been delayed since the province requires naive gilts to be in a barn for 30 days before the site is considered presumptive negative. Those farms introduced exposed gilts and must first run those gilts through the production cycle and replace them.

All farms should be presumptive negative by March 2018, Duizer said.

Trade deals

The pork industry is keeping a close eye on North American Free Trade Agreement talks.

The U.S. is Manitoba’s main destination for both meat and live pigs. About three million weanlings are traded south every year and Manitoba exports 90 per cent of its pork production, also mostly to the U.S.

“We hope that border stays open for trade and that trade freely flows one way and the other,” Matheson said.

Both beef and pork sectors are also bouncing between promised access to Europe and regulatory barriers.

CETA, Canada’s trade deal with the European Union, promises access to over 81,000 pounds of pork, but would require changes to labelling, more compatible inspection standards and trichinella-free validation for Canadian meat.

“It will be a market that we pay attention to, but I think the main potential is the Far East, especially China,” Matheson said.

Japan, China, Korea and Vietnam are a major trade focus for MPC and part of the continuing saga of the Trans-Pacific Partnership. Countries are still trying to save the deal since the U.S. withdrew in early 2017.

Predictions for 2018

The pork sector will celebrate changes to the Livestock Manure and Mortalities Management regulation this year, with changes coming into play Jan. 1.

Provincial Sustainable Development Minister Rochelle Squires said the changes bring the pork sector in line with other livestock industries.

Among the changes, the province is removing in-season nitrate limits, laying out permit needs for seasonal feeding areas, removing some processing steps for permits, putting more information in public registries, adding variance options to accommodate biosecurity and changing how farms are monitored.

MPC also hopes the new year will bring wash station changes. The group lobbied the Canadian Food Inspection Agency to allow trucks crossing back into Canada from the United States to be sealed at the border and washed at a designated site in province, something it says will allow more control over biosecurity.

That plan is now in the works, both MPC and the CFIA say.

Prices also look good as the calendar flips over.

“The futures didn’t look like they would be, they weakened off in the fall, but the first part of 2018 looks reasonably good,” Matheson said. “There will be, I think, some profits being made over the next seven or eight months.”

The post Pork sector mixed victories and challenges in 2017 appeared first on Manitoba Co-operator.

Chair George Matheson says the service is about halfway ready for its launch. The pork council has allocated $60,000 for the new program, which Matheson says will be run primarily by the pork council’s general manager, Andrew Dickson, and sustainable development programs manager Michael Teillet.

• Read more: Door opens to hog expansion
• Read more: Hog production faces opposing ideologies

“The permitting that is necessary to build a hog barn is very confusing and I think for a lot of people who are considering building a barn, they find this to be a real obstacle,” Matheson said. “To have someone who specializes in that area and can walk them through it and lead them to experts who can help them with planning and construction and conditional use hearings and visits to their neighbours and public in the area will be greatly helpful.”

The development corporation will help producers navigate governmental red tape, the pork council says. Teillet estimates that getting a conditional use order currently takes between seven months to a year.

“That’s just unacceptable,” he said during a Nov. 9 membership meeting in Portage la Prairie. “And, of that year of approvals, probably seven to nine months of that is that conditional use and TRC (Technical Review Committee) process under the Planning Act, so the Planning Act is a big piece of this puzzle.”

Changes needed

The Manitoba Pork Council says it plans to tackle changes to the Planning Act next year. Those changes would be the “fourth step” and “the biggest nut to crack” in the pork council’s regulatory change to-do list, Teillet told producers Nov. 9.

“We’ve been working on this for quite a while,” he said. “We’ve made a number of very specific and concrete recommendations to the government. We’re very confident that the government is listening and is reviewing this very closely.”

The council has requested changes to streamline the approval system and lessen time needed to approve barns.

The hog industry has already seen changes to the building code, which were adjusted to align with the national farm code earlier this year. The previous building code was based on corporate and industrial codes that the hog industry argued did not fit with low-occupancy hog barns, although critics argued that changing the building code loosened fire safety.

The industry next set its sights on rules requiring barns to have anaerobic digesters to treat manure. The industry has long referred to the requirement as a “barn ban,” arguing that the cost of an anaerobic digester, which it has priced at over $1 million, makes new barns an economic impossibility. The issue has been a thorn in the side of the pork industry since the moratorium first cropped up in 2007 and went province-wide in 2011.

The province eased rules in 2015, launching a pilot program to allow new barns to be built, dependent on location and a list of requirements, including a two-cell lagoon system.

The pork industry just saw the requirement removed entirely Nov. 10. Bill 24, which amended parts of the Environment Act that required anaerobic digesters, as well as a ban on winter manure spreading (although that ban is still required under Livestock Manure and Mortalities Management Regulation), passed third reading and received royal assent after a marathon Legislature session.

The news was met with celebration from the hog industry.

Unwritten ban

Dave Hildebrandt, general manager for Morris Piglets near Lowe Farm, Man., said he was never denied a proposed barn, but that the regulations created a chilling effect where he, like many other farmers, never started the process of getting approval, scared off by the long wait times and bureaucratic red tape.

“We didn’t look at expanding and get stopped by that process, but I think a lot of people just never started the process because, for the animal sector, it was just unreasonable,” Hildebrandt said.

“I believe Bill 24 is a good move,” he added. “It’s based a little bit more on what I understand the science to be as far as environment and things of that nature and what’s more realistic to what our hog sector does in the agriculture industry.”

Teillet says the changes are also coming to the Livestock Manure and Mortalities Management Regulation. The pork council expects those changes to be introduced by the end of the year and finalized in spring 2018. Teillet added that Bill 24 had to be passed to make way for LMMMR changes.

Planning Act changes are also anticipated in spring 2018, Teillet said.

The pork council has not announced additional staff to run the Swine Development Corporation.

“It will not take a lot of time from our staff,” Matheson said. “The staff will direct (producers) to other people and those people will be putting in a lot of time to get the development going.”

While the corporation is still in the works, Matheson said his organization is prepared for producers needing help more immediately.

“If someone came to us tomorrow and said, ‘We want to build a barn, where do we begin?’ we would be able to point them in the right direction and be of great assistance to them,” he said.

The post Development corporation to assist hog barn builders appeared first on Manitoba Co-operator.

After an all-night session at the Manitoba Legislature, Bill 24 has passed its final reading and received royal assent.

Better known as the Red Tape Reduction and Government Efficiency Act, Bill 24 covers legislation ranging from consumer protection and labour relations, to residential tenancies and transportation of dangerous goods, but it has been proposed changes to hog production that garnered the most attention as the legislation made its towards becoming law.

“It’s good news for us of course, to be allowed to build barns without the requirement of an anaerobic digester, so it’s a step in the right direction,” said George Matheson, chairman of the Manitoba Pork Council. “It didn’t surprise me that it passed.”

The newly passed act amends The Environment Act, removing general prohibitions for the expansion of hog barns and manure storage facilities. Bill 24 also strikes the winter manure application ban from the Environment Act, although winter application would continue to be prohibited for all livestock operations in Manitoba under the Livestock Manure and Mortalities Management Regulation.

• Read more: Hog production faces opposing ideologies

While hog producers have never been banned outright from building new barns, the previous requirement that all new barns install costly anaerobic digesters effectively made new barn construction unattainable, the Pork Council has said.

Matheson said it’s possible that some new construction will begin as early as next year.

“I think that in 2018 we might see a few,” he said. “We’ve got the swine development corporation in place to assist producers with that — It’s one thing to be allowed to build barns, it’s another thing to get them built and go through the permitting process.”

He hopes to see an average of 10 new barns built each year for the next 10 years, enough to cover the current hog shortfall experienced by processors in the province.

“I’d say that’s a realistic goal, I hope we build more than that, but I think that’s very doable,” Matheson said.

Keystone Agricultural Producers were also pleased to hear the bill had passed its third reading.

“Clearly the government has made a commitment to taking agricultural issues seriously and dedicating the legislative time necessary to find resolutions to them,” said KAP general manager James Battershill.

The activist group Hog Watch Manitoba had opposed Bill 24, but could not be reached for comment before press time.

— With files from Allan Dawson

The post Door opens to hog expansion appeared first on Manitoba Co-operator.

Those are just a sampling of the varied opinions heard by an all-party committee of the provincial legislature last week during two days of public hearing on Bill 24. Better known as the Red Tape Reduction and Government Efficiency Act, the omnibus bill covers legislation ranging from consumer protection and labour relations, to residential tenancies and transportation of dangerous goods — but it was the proposed changes to hog production that garnered the most attention.

In many cases the issues being raised aren’t even covered by the proposed legislation, industry representatives told the committee.

“Manure does not get into rivers and lakes, in fact it is illegal for manure to leave a field, injecting manure also reduces greenhouse gases and significantly reduces odour,” George Matheson, Manitoba Pork’s chairperson told committee members. “By law, manure management plans with soil test results are filed annually with Manitoba Sustainable Development… these requirements will not change with these proposed amendments.”

Matheson was the first of about 60 registered presenters to speak to the Standing Committee on Legislative Affairs and addressed proposed changes to The Environment Act. If passed, hog producers will no longer have to install pricey anaerobic digesters in order to expand their operations, a cost so prohibitively high it effectively made new barn construction unattainable, the MPC says.

• Read more: Hog production faces opposing ideologies

In a press release issued this spring, the Manitoba government described Bill 24 as removing “general prohibitions from The Environment Act for the expansion of hog barns and manure storage facilities.”

It’s something that the Pork Council’s general manager called long overdue.

Speaking as a private citizen, Andrew Dickson did not mince words. He called the so-called hog barn moratorium brought in under Gary Doer’s NDP government “cynical fabrications of utter nonsense” that sated political rather than environmental concerns.

He continued, adding that “the (Greg) Selinger government recognized that it had been left a rotting corpse and devised a convoluted way around the legislation,” but that the reduction of red tape was what hog producers really needed.

Michael Stainton of the Lake Winnipeg Foundation agreed that anaerobic digesters aren’t the answer to nutrient run-off, but also expressed concerns around the expansion of Manitoba’s hog industry.

“Anaerobic digestion should not be the factor limiting the growth of Manitoba’s hog industry, however, we strongly believe that industry expansion should be limited by the availability of suitable land for manure spreading,” he said. “Currently hog production in Manitoba is very concentrated… because high costs prohibit the long-distance transport of manure, manure spreading on these operations is also very concentrated.”

He noted 35 per cent of the province’s hog operations are located on one per cent of the province’s land.

“The moment we start spreading more manure than crops can use it’s no longer fertilizer, it’s a waste product to be disposed of and as such poses a risk to our water supply.”

If passed, Bill 24 would also decrease the number of infrastructure assessments that public and semi-public water suppliers are required to conduct. Currently, water system infrastructure must be tested every five years, but the Progressive Conservative government is seeking to change the test interval period to 10 years.

It’s a prospect that caused concern for Mike Sutherland who presented to the committee on behalf of Peguis First Nation. He said a potential expansion of intensive livestock operations, coupled with a reduction in oversight, could spell disaster for his community.

“This bill is going to have a negative effect,” Sutherland told the committee. “Peguis floods yearly, it’s at the basin in the north end… south of the basin is all farmland, with a fair share of hog barn operations, Peguis gets its drinking water from the groundwater.”

He added that since the hog-barn moratorium came into effect, there has been a reduction in a number of health issues related to water quality in his community.

But as with many presenters, much of the information presented was anecdotal, something Stainton said points to the root of the problem — a lack of scientific data.

“Without data, industry, government, regulators and concerned citizens cannot accurately quantify the current impact of Manitoba’s hog industry on water quality,” he said. “We just don’t know.”

Bill 24 would also strike the winter manure application ban from the Environment Act, although winter application would continue to be prohibited for all livestock operations in Manitoba under the Livestock Manure and Mortalities Management Regulation.

Several presenters, including Stainton, asked the committee to keep the ban on winter application enshrined in legislation.

“The Lake Winnipeg Foundation urges that Bill 24 be amended so as to not repeal Section 40.2 of the Manitoba Environment Act,” Stainton said, calling it the most important environmental protection afforded Lake Winnipeg in the last two decades. “The ban on winter spreading of all manure should be maintained in legislation, the highest form of protection for Manitoba’s water.”

Finance Minister Cam Friesen responded to concerns about the proposed change by stressing that removing the provision from the legislation was about eliminating “redundancy,” not weakening environmental protections.

“Let me clarify one thing for you, our government has no plans to allow for a change in terms of winter manure spreading,” he told Stainton.

But opposition MLA James Allum pushed back against the assertion.

“What he fails to say is that if it stays in legislation, then he has to come before a committee like this and do proper consultation,” said the representative for Fort Garry-Riverview. “When it’s in regulation, any Wednesday morning at a cabinet meeting, with a stroke of a pen he can get rid of it.”

However, hog producers like Margaret Rempel urged the MLAs to see manure as a resource rather than a waste product.

“Livestock manure is a very valuable resource to me as a farmer,” she said. “As a high-quality, organic fertilizer it provides superior nutrition for growing crops, contributes significantly to the building of healthy soils in the long term and of course is a local product and a renewable product.”

Lyanne Cypres spoke to the hog industry’s ability to build something else all together — community. She came to Neepawa from the Philippines to work for HyLife Foods as a temporary foreign worker. Today, she is a Canadian citizen and said that Neepawa is no longer the “ghost town” it was when she arrived in 2009.

She told the committee she was speaking on behalf of the more than 1,000 immigrants who have come to the small town to work in the industry in the hope of a better life than the one they left behind.

They “had their lives and their family’s lives changed through the pork industry in Manitoba… we are grateful for this chance,” Cypres said. “We would like to see the pork industry flourish.”

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