Early last week, leaders from the Canadian Roundtable for Sustainable Beef (CRSB) met with Earls Restaurants to discuss sustainable sourcing. By mid-week, the company announced it had made a mistake. "I think it was unfortunate that it happened in the first place," Fawn Jackson, executive director of the CRSB, told Shaun Haney in an interview,... Read More
Category: Livestock
There's no doubt concerns around antimicrobial resistance (AMR) are growing. According the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the States sees at least "2 million people become infected with bacteria resistant to antibiotics and at least 23,000 people die each year as a direct result of these infections." In response to these concerns, the federal... Read More
Team success hinges on all members adhering to a credo embedded deep in their psyche. You know some of them: There’s no “I” in team; one dream, one team; we are family, and so on. Pork producer Vincent Breton is a believer in that team mentality. He’s the third generation of a very successful pork... Read More
Retailers are enjoying this part of the beef cycle. Producers? Not so much. Cattle futures put in some new lows last week, as Anne Wasko of Gateway Livestock joins us for another Beef Market Update. With slaughter levels in the U.S. up around 10 percent for the last two weeks of April, there's been a... Read More
The media firestorm caused by Earls Kitchen + Bar's pursuit of the “Certified Humane” standard has quickly become a cautionary tale for both the farm and food industry. It’s a situation a coalition of Ontario farm organizations are hoping to avoid by working with the food and beverage sector to help clarify and streamline sustainability... Read More
Bruce Vandenberg knows all about the challenges and opportunities of milking goats. He got into the business in 1989 and over the past 25 years has built Mariposa Dairy Ltd., the second-largest processor of milk goat cheese in Canada. Speaking at the 2016 Canadian Dairy XPO, Vandenberg explained that his home farm now milks about... Read More
In a move that surprised many in the Canadian cattle industry, Earls Kitchen + Bar announced Wednesday that the chain will source as much beef as possible from Alberta. "We are listening to Canadians, and primarily out of Alberta, we're listening to the industry," corporate executive chef Phil Gallagher told RealAgriculture's Shaun Haney in an... Read More
Editor's note: Listen to Earls' corporate chef Phil Gallagher discuss plans for sourcing Alberta beef here. Earls restaurant chain has changed its mind, announcing it will bring back Canadian beef into its restaurants, although the details on how much and how it will work are unclear. Last week, the company, which opened its first restaurant... Read More
It's backwards. Illogical. The federal government's move to enforce an outdated rule that increases the risk of PED virus infecting Western Canadian pig farms doesn't make sense. While hog operations across the U.S. and Eastern Canada have been devastated by PEDv over the last few years, Western Canadian hog farms have managed to stay mostly... Read More
Julaine Treur was on Facebook one day when she stumbled upon a video of a family of dairy farmers. The video described the family's role as stewards of the land, and Treur felt it was absolutely beautiful. She thought most people would share her sentiment. Then she read the comments. "I was horrified," she said.... Read More