CHESTERVILLE - Several hundred additional dead cattle seem to be disappearing without a trace each month, as the province’s two largest deadstock haulers are reporting a substantial decline in bovine carcasses picked up from Ontario farms.
Guy Machabee, owner of Eastern Ontario’s only deadstock handler, Machabee Animal Food Ltd., told The AgriNews that pickups are down 50 per cent since he was forced to raise prices after the province eliminated a five-year-old subsidy program in February.
The carcass drop at Machabee’s amounts to "three-hundred-and-some large animals per month," he said. "Last year at this time, we were at 700 cows a month, but we’re 350 now."
The reduction coincides with a collection fee hike he says he had to impose, boosting his price to $125 per cow carcass, up from $65.
Meanwhile, Western Ontario’s most prominent deadstock collector, Atwood Pet Food Supplies Limited, has seen a 20 per cent decline in pickups, according to the firm’s president David Smith. "I’m 200 lower than before," Smith said. "I should also be picking up six- to seven thousand calves a month, but I’m only getting about 1,200."
Because Atwood has its own rendering facility, its collection fees are lower than Machabee, which ships to renderers in Quebec - though Atwood has also passed along an increase as a result of the cancelled subsidy. Smith said his firm now charges $50 per cow, up from $30.
"We had to raise our prices up, and the market went down," he pointed out.
The firm has built a $5-million provincially funded gasification plant, which has yet to come on stream. Smith said the plant will reduce his operating costs in what are tough times for the deadstock industry. "We’re not making any money.... We’re just squeezing to get by."
But Machabee said his firm is losing $20,000 a month and has had to lay off eight employees and sell a number of trucks as a result. "You can only lose 20 grand a month for so long," Machabee said, when asked how long the firm can hold out.
"We’ve been holding on the last six months. We’re trying our best to survive."
He, too, aims to cut his costs by employing an energy-from-waste technology - in Machabee’s case, a carcass-composting facility that would produce electricity from methane - but has so far been denied government funding.
In concert with the subsidy cut and decline in the deadstock trade, the provincial government has been promoting on-farm deadstock disposal, which includes the option of composting, contained in new Disposal of Dead Farm Animal regulations introduced last spring under the Nutrient Management Act.
The government’s on-farm emphasis is a concern to the Ontario Federation of Agriculture. Farmers attending an Oct. 7 meeting of the Dundas Federation of Agriculture were told by OFA board member Eleanor Renaud that "prions don’t go away, they remain in the soil. On-farm composting has big implications as soon as the first case of BSE comes out."
Concerns were also expressed that on-farm disposal may be fuelling a rise in the coyote population, resulting in greater livestock predation.
"The consensus is we should not be getting into disposal on the farm of any nature," said Renaud.
Ontario’s Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs does acknowledge a downturn in the numbers of deadstock being shipped off farm.
"Our inspection information from licensed deadstock collectors confirms that there has been a drop in numbers of deadstock leaving the farm for disposal, though this cannot be directly attributed to the introduction of the new regulations in the spring of 2009," OMAFRA spokesmen Brent Ross said in an email.
Ross attributed the decline to farmers unwilling to pay increased pickup fees, new legal options for on-farm disposal, decreased size in the provincial livestock herd, and the "relatively positive health status of Ontario livestock."
Asked if the ministry believes farmers are following the new disposal regulations, Ross noted the interest they’ve shown in attending information sessions on the subject. Fifty dairy and beef producers from Eastern Ontario had already taken part in a pair of information sessions held in Renfrew and Kemptville, he said, with a third, French-language session still scheduled for Nov. 24. in Casselman. More sessions could be in the works in response to additional requests already received by the ministry.
Ross also pointed out that "the Ministry of the Enviroment is responsible for on-farm compliance of deadstock disposal" - not OMAFRA.
Taken off the farm by a deadstock operator, some parts of a carcass will typically end up in landfill after rendering.
At the only landfill in Ontario licensed to receive deadstock and related byproducts, such as the unusable meat and bone meal left over from the Atwood rendering plant, the operators confirmed a decline in this incoming waste stream.
Lafleche Environmental’s Moose Creek landfill site had taken in 2,976 tonnes by the end of October last year, but company president Brian King said the figure was 2,863 tonnes to the same point this year - a drop of 113 tonnes.
More information on the new on-farm disposal regulation is located at
www.omafra.gov.on.ca/english/livestock/deadstock/index.html or by contacting the Agricultural Information Contact Centre at 1-877-424-1300.
News
November, 2009
Vol. 33, No. 11
NEWS
