CBC: The State of Alberta Beef Industry.

[AgrivilleAdmin]

Anyone see this news story when it ran?


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[grassfarmer]

No, never saw it before. Hilarious though that people
think fish and chicken are healthier. Heavy metal
farmed fish and CFO chicken, yep real healthy. Still I
suppose they aren't hormone implanted or
ractopamine fed. What a missed opportunity for a
healthy Alberta raised beef product.
Was Ted heading to a pride parade? - wow quite the
shirt!

[grassfarmer]

No, never saw it before. Hilarious though that people
think fish and chicken are healthier. Heavy metal
farmed fish and CFO chicken, yep real healthy. Still I
suppose they aren't hormone implanted or
ractopamine fed. What a missed opportunity for a
healthy Alberta raised beef product.
Was Ted heading to a pride parade? - wow quite the
shirt!

[littledoggie]

I wouldn't eat farmed fish if someone gave it to me. They feed them anything they can from fish by-products to beef by-products, antibiotics, and additive to make the flesh pinker and who knows what else? Why is this perceived as being healthier than beef?

[grassfarmer]

Did anyone see W5 the other night - expose of a hog
gestation barn in Manitoba? I've been around animals
all my life and seen plenty of conditions where things
were less than desirable but the way those hogs were
treated and the conditions they were kept in were just
disgusting. It was really hard to watch.
I've had a couple of my meat customers email me
about it so it obviously was picked up by consumers.

[kato]

The company (Puratone) that owned that barn went bankrupt shortly after the story aired. The last news I had was that Maple Leaf was buying them out for 42 million or so.

Have things improved? Who knows.. I doubt if anyone will ever get a camera into a barn there again.

The mega barn, large factory operation business model in the hog industry is showing cracks. It seems the only ones that will be left standing will be the processors who have bought out all the bankrupt hog producers. In Manitoba, at least, the smaller producers are having rules and regulations piled on top of each other to the point that they just quit. There used to be over 6,000 registered hog producers in this province. They now number in the hundreds, rather than thousands.

We cattle producers need to keep an eye on this sort of thing, and stay on top of things or we will go down the same road.