By Andrew Heck

Waste not, want not

Food waste is a growing concern for social, financial and environmental reasons. The biggest wasters of food in the western world, by a wide margin, are grocery stores, restaurants and consumers. As food security, affordability and eco-consciousness are thrust into the spotlight, agri-food value chain stakeholders are looking for solutions to address the problem. One such outlet for retail food waste today is the distribution of human food scraps as livestock feed.

Across Canada, some livestock producers have been taking an interest in food redistribution initiatives by accepting packages of organic goods from grocery stores and restaurants, which includes items like fresh produce, baked goods, dairy and deli products, which may or may not include meat. Once these items are past their ‘saleable’ condition, they are sometimes loosely sorted, then bagged, boxed and sold or donated to be fed to animals, including livestock and pets.

Fido may have no problem munching on a discarded pork bone, but pigs on-farm certainly should not do the same. While food waste redistribution seems like an easy and efficient manner of disposing waste, concerns have been raised by some commercial hog producers and food safety officials who fear the potentially negative consequences of some farmers’ misguided good intentions.

Feeding scraps compromises food safety

For consumers, personal and family well-being is utmost. In years gone by, the industry has been faced with a dark legacy of battling Trichinosis – the parasitic disease that can infect humans, spread between mammals, including pigs, that consume animal flesh or feces hosting Trichinella worms. When undercooked Trichinella-infected meat is eaten by humans, the results can be deadly.

The commercial pork industry has been successfully free of Trichinosis for more than three decades, but some skeptical consumers still hesitate to eat pork unless it is cooked beyond all recognition – if they are comfortable eating it at all. While cooking pork past 160 degrees Fahrenheit is almost completely unnecessary for food safety reasons, even today, the parasite still does exist in some populations of wild carnivores and omnivores, like coyotes and bears. Thankfully, it has not re-emerged in the commercial industry, which produces the vast majority of meat consumed in Canada. But could feeding scraps contribute to a resurgence of Trichinosis or similar parasites and viruses?

The most recent occurrence of Trichinosis in Canadian swine occurred in January 2013 in a pig raised on a non-commercial farm. The animal was slaughtered and consumed on-farm, and no product entered the food system. However, as many non-commercial pig owners raise and feed animals outdoors, cross-contamination is possible between infected wildlife and the soil where pigs walk and eat. By placing heaps of food scraps on the ground for rooting, parasites and viruses are invited to be ingested. `

“Heat treatment is the best means of removing potential pathogens and increasing stability and shelf life of a product,” said Theresa Fritz, Communications Officer, Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA). “Products that are dried are also less likely to harbour microbial contaminants.”

Trichinosis is perhaps the most foreboding and dangerous threat for consumers; however, other foodborne illnesses are also worth noting in the context of food scraps especially.

Almost routinely, we are made aware of recalls on fresh produce related to E. coli and salmonella contamination. Such recalls are a testament to the work of CFIA to keep food safe for Canadian consumers. When these contaminated products make their way into the human food chain either through home or restaurant consumption, illness often follows for those who have eaten them. Illness can also result, similarly, when animals are fed these contaminated products.

Bacteria like E. coli and salmonella are destroyed when cooked to a certain temperature. However, much fresh produce is consumed raw, and scraps used by farmers to feed animals may or may not have been cooked in advance. Certainly, waste containing items like lettuce, onions and most fruits are not cooked prior to distribution from a grocery store or restaurant, and if a farmer fails to thoroughly cook these items before to feeding them to animals, the cycle of contamination can be perpetuated.

Feeding scraps lacks animal health benefits

In Canada, it is illegal to feed meat to livestock. And while many plant-based and dairy products from the human food chain, known as ‘recycled food products’ (RFPs), are legal to feed, they require regulatory clearance, and regulatory clearance alone does not mean such products benefit livestock nutritionally.

“RFP guidance was developed approximately 20 years ago in response to growing requests for these waste products to be recognized as safe feed ingredients,” said Fritz. “Companies were looking for innovative ways to divert waste from landfills and address escalating landfill costs by repurposing some products that could be useful. All ingredients to be utilized as livestock feed must undergo a pre-market assessment.”

The CFIA is responsible for regulating RFPs in Canada. RFPs that are exempt from the Feeds Act and Regulations are still subject to the Health of Animals Regulations. RFPs fed to pigs must also be registered as a feed or listed in Schedule IV or V of the Feeds Regulations. Commercially produced RFPs that meet acceptable standards are considered safe for livestock, but this is likely not the case with grocery and restaurant scraps.

When it comes to scraps that have skirted the approval process, it is possible at least some of the items included in an unsorted mixture are not allowed to be fed to livestock.

“RFPs from a restaurant or grocery store are likely to involve many more people and therefore more chance for error,” said Fritz. “Each person needs to be made aware of what the requirements are: no meat, keep it clean, don’t add in other types of waste and so on. There needs to be some awareness that these waste products are no longer ‘garbage’ but are becoming a feed ingredient that becomes part of the human food chain.”

Like human diets, proper pig diets include a balance of water, carbohydrates, fats, amino acids, minerals and vitamins. Complete feed rations should be considered in consultation with an animal nutritionist, who will most likely recommend a diet heavy on grains, pulses and oilseeds that provide an effective nutritional balance to enhance pigs’ average daily gain and overall physical well-being. Some human foods, such as pitted fruits, vegetables from the nightshade family, tree nuts and chocolate are even toxic for pigs.

By introducing ingredients like food scraps into pigs’ diets, farmers may be unknowingly weakening the health of their pigs, lowering the quality of their animals’ meat and potentially jeopardizing the commercial pork industry that is worth $24 billion annually to the Canadian economy.

Feeding scraps destabilizes the pork industry

For the Canadian pork industry today, perhaps the most troubling consequence of feeding scraps is the potential for spreading African Swine Fever (ASF) – a disease that has a near-complete mortality rate for pigs it infects, prompting the culling of entire herds where infected individuals are found.

In 2018, ASF spread through domestic pig herds in China almost overnight after food scraps shipped from Russia (where ASF has been known to exist for more than a decade) were fed to pigs by farmers looking for a cheap source of pig sustenance. As a result, feeding food waste to pigs is now illegal in China.

“Producers, including small-scale producers, as well as people who keep pigs as pets, are reminded that ASF could be introduced to pig herds through contaminated food waste,” said Fritz. “In the rare event that a food item is contaminated with even a trace amount of the virus, it would be harmless to humans but could still infect pigs.”

While ASF is the single-greatest disease risk to the pork industry today, the disease does not impact human health. Nevertheless, its presence could compromise long-standing international trade relationships, as recently observed with the discovery of the disease in Germany, whose pork exports are now banned in 14 countries worldwide. Canada exports 63 per cent of the pork produced from more than 20 million pigs slaughtered annually. Should Canada be faced with a similar situation, the country would immediately lose access to many global customers, spelling financial ruin.

The voluntary, producer-driven Canadian Quality Assurance (CQA) and Canadian Pork Excellence (CPE) programs provide guidelines for feeding pigs, which include the strict control and monitoring of diet, for pig health and meat quality. All commercial producers in Canada – those who sell pigs to federally inspected abattoirs, which sell their meat into grocery stores and international markets – are certified under these programs.

While commercial producers do not feed scraps, when non-commercial producers engage in the practice, it has the potential to damage the reputation of our products and could raise questions from important trade partners about the status of our industry.

Striking a balance between efficiency and safety

For producers and consumers alike, there is an ongoing desire to balance food system efficiency with food safety. While the goal is noble, we should sometimes step back and consider the implications of decisions such as feeding human food scraps to pigs.

While pigs could eat most things found in a load of scraps, it does not necessarily mean they should. The associated risks with feeding scraps often outweigh the benefits for the broader industry.

Before anyone considers feeding food scraps to pigs, CFIA recommends contacting the closest animal health office, located across the country, to ensure compliance with all federal feed and health regulations.

By Joey Dearborn

Editor’s note: Joey Dearborn is the communications coordinator for Manitoba Pork. He can be contacted at jdearborn@manitobapork.com.

After 16 years at the helm of Manitoba Pork as the organization’s general manager, Andrew Dickson has decided to move on. Dickson’s journey in agriculture began nearly half a century ago and has shaped the Canadian pork industry in many positive ways.

Agriculture flows through Dickson’s blood

Andrew Dickson’s journey to Manitoba from England – with his agriculture degree from the University of Reading in hand – started in 1974 with a ‘help wanted’ ad soliciting farm workers to come to the province as part of the Manitoba Farm Labour Pool. Dickson set aside his goal of becoming a manager for a British bank in favour of a seasonal job on a large dairy farm near Dauphin and a notional plan to eventually move to Australia or South Africa.

“Late that fall, through the Farm Labour Pool manager, I met the regional director from Manitoba Agriculture at the time, who told me that he had two positions open for agriculture representatives – one in Ste. Rose and one in Russell,” said Dickson. “I asked the farmer, who had relatives in England, and he said that he would go to Russell, because there were more English people there!”

After a short trip back to England and a visit to the High Commissioner’s office in London to get his immigration papers, where he was advised to “buy a pair of sunglasses to avoid snow blindness and keep [his] T4 slips,” Dickson made the permanent move to Canada. From his first posting in Russell, he transferred to Stonewall, in 1977, as an agriculture representative. In 1981, he changed roles, becoming the province’s chief of the 4-H and Youth Programs, moving again, in 1983, to Arborg as the regional director for the Interlake region, and finally to Beausejour, in 1991, with responsibility for the Interlake-Eastern region.

“I spent almost 30 years in agricultural extension, but we also had to deal with floods in the Red River Valley, with prairie fires in Ashern, flooding around Arborg and Fisher Branch, and droughts across the regions,” said Dickson. “The 1980s were a hard time in agriculture in Manitoba in terms of crops. People were losing a lot of money. We organized suicide workshops at one point. It was a big adjustment period, because there was a lot of new technology, in terms of machinery, new crops and farm chemicals. In the 1990s, there was a massive expansion in the pork business with hundreds of new barns built on a scale never seen before. I was very involved in the development of the regulations dealing with local planning and environmental protection.”

As the industry evolves, so does the organization

Joining Manitoba Pork in 2005, Dickson has been at the forefront of many new programs and services when it comes to food safety and disease management, labour shortages, financial challenges and resolving sometimes-thorny political issues in Manitoba related to new barn developments and ending the moratorium on expansion, in addition to dealing with the fallout of trade issues in North America and around the world.

“I came to Manitoba Pork at a time when the organization had changed from being a single-desk marketing agency into an industry sector organization,” said Dickson. “The job was to represent the organization and put in programs and services that would benefit the industry as a whole.

“The board of directors asked me to move the emphasis from the public and industry relations side toward the producer services and business development side, because they wanted to be more involved in supporting hog production on-farm.”

Global trade is an issue that has remained top-of-mind throughout Dickson’s tenure. In the year before he took over the general manager role, the U.S. moved to enact a countervailing duty on Canadian hog imports. Canada won the subsequent trade case and was able to move forward with continued exports to a strong trading partner.

“When I arrived, we were still in the middle of a trade case with the U.S., and that April, we got the results that we won the case,” said Dickson. “One of our first objectives was to repair relationships with our U.S. counterparts, especially in Iowa and Minnesota, because we shipped a lot of iso-weans and feeder pigs there. We initiated a new program to get down there and be visible, getting to know the Americans and their issues with us. We’ve come a long way, and it’s now part of our regular activities.”

Dickson noted that the importance of the U.S. market cannot be overstated, and that his successor needs to keep trade relationships as a top priority, as “you cannot make assumptions when it comes to building these relationships.”

Dickson instrumental in navigating industry issues

Following Canada’s successful trade challenge, the U.S. moved to enact mandatory country-of-origin labelling (mCOOL). After eight years of appeals to the World Trade Organization (WTO), Canada won the case in May 2015, and the U.S. Congress scrapped the mCOOL policy soon after. It took numerous trips to Geneva, Switzerland and Washington, D.C. not only to support the Government of Canada’s efforts to overturn mCOOL, but also to encourage U.S. politicians to change the legislation. The support of the U.S. pork industry was crucial to ultimate success.

Dickson also suggested that it is crucial to work together with producers and organizations across western Canada, because of how interlinked the industry is. He cautioned that provinces cannot go it alone when it comes to a strategy for building a stronger sector.

“For example, the federal and provincial governments have been very good over the last couple decades in terms of supporting the industry in accessing foreign labour. We are a high-turnover industry, so we have to replace labour, and our country is short on labour all the time.”

Dickson also sees labour as having a great benefit to many rural communities across the province, not just in Winnipeg. He noted that many communities want new hog operations and often approach Manitoba Pork for assistance because of the diversity new workers bring to their small towns.

A major issue close to home was the decision by the Government of Manitoba to enact a hog moratorium on new expansions and barns across the province, around the same time as Manitoba Pork was working to establish a new processing facility in Winnipeg.

“Our relationship with the government of the day was deteriorating rapidly,” said Dickson. “The board of directors wanted to push back against the moratorium, and they wanted to tell the government that this is very bad for rural Manitoba – it’s very bad for our industry, it’s bad for the province and there’s no science behind this. We decided to call the government out on it.”

In 2006, as part of a Clean Environment Commission review, barn expansions were paused. In 2008, the government introduced Bill 17, which effectively banned barns in all or parts of 35 municipalities. In 2011, the provincial government went further, essentially banning new hog barns across the province under the guise of protecting Lake Winnipeg.

“It’s hard to imagine that we had producers picketing on the front steps of the Legislature,” said Dickson. “It was unheard of in Manitoba – senior businessmen picketing like that.”

Dickson makes his mark on the future

After the 2016 Manitoba provincial election, the new provincial government ended the hog barn moratorium and enacted new changes to municipal planning, leaving municipalities in charge of many of the governing regulations.

“The new government brought in new rules about how barns would get approved in the province, continuing to protect the environment but dropping the moratorium.”

Going forward, Dickson indicated that bringing new producers into hog farming is paramount, and that there is a real opportunity in having crop producers invest in the industry and use manure to offset the use of synthetic fertilizers.

In terms of Dickson’s advice to his successor, it boils down to the team you have around you.

“As a manager, you have to recruit and develop your staff, and give them a lead on issues. You have to be creative and innovative in your programming. You have to work with funding agencies like the provincial and federal governments on projects that will be of significant benefit to agriculture as a whole. You also really have to be focused on your relationship with governments and the public, because they have to be able to trust us to do the right thing in raising pigs and producing pork. We have to address their concerns while building the business.”

At a trade show in Iowa, the former head of the Iowa Pork Producers Association reminded Dickson that there is “never a dull day in the hog industry.” Dickson has seen his fair share of those days in agriculture, but he remains hopeful and optimistic about the sector, as he begins another chapter in his life.

“Pork is the most popular meat choice in the world, and Manitoba is ideally suited to the production of high-quality pork products,” said Dickson. “There is plenty of room to double the industry and create good jobs and wealth for the province. Smart investments and confidence in the future are the keys to success. I am proud to be a Canadian. Canada really is the best country in the world, but we can’t rest on past success. We have to work at it all the time.”