Lees insight

After a week of competition, the suspense is over. A young wine making couple from Saskatchewan and two young dedicated sheep producers from Quebec have been named Canada’s Outstanding Young Farmers for 2012.  At a gala dinner in downtown Charlottetown, PEI, Friday Nov. 30, Vance Lester and Susan Echlin, who operate a  successful fruit winery […] Read more

Like many in the beef industry, I was sorry to learn this week that Saskatchewan rancher Neil Jahnke died, Monday, Nov. 26 at his ranch near Gouldtown, north of Swift Current. He was 70. I didn’t know him well, but I had interviewed him over the years, and certainly knew his name, and I knew […] Read more

I know there are a million good causes out there, and people are trying to “save” everything from whales to laying hens, but if you have a soft spot in your heart for birds at all perhaps fork over a few bucks to help the parrots. I know, parrots! What do parrots have to do […] Read more

A guy can handle a “gala” evening out, only every so often and I think I am good for a while. My wife and I were guests this past weekend at the Ag for Life Harvest Gala dinner in Calgary. I figure I can look really good about three times a year, so after my […] Read more

 I hate to sound pessimistic, but there is just something about this XL Foods meat recall that reminds me of the 9/11 attacks on New York in 2001. I know the contaminated meat recall at XL wasn’t a terrorist attack, but I remember turning on TV in the early morning of September 11, 2001 and […] Read more

I may have let the Canadian Food Inspection Agency off way too easy in my earlier comments about the schmozzle concerning the massive recall of beef from XL Foods at Brooks, Alta. And schmozzle isn’t even a good word as it suggests some comic mixup…and there is nothing comical about it. The shut down, which […] Read more

If there is one thing we are learning about the XL Foods meat recall is how not to handle a wide-scale meat recall. To me it is a gong show. The first alarm was raised a month ago — September 4 —  with a batch of meat testing positive for E.coli 0157:H7 and since then […] Read more

I feel badly for XL Foods for this major meat recall. I am sure they never intend to produce products that may be suspect in making people sick. But they sure have dropped the ball from a PR standpoint when it comes to “dealing” with this latest and expanding alarm over a wide range of […] Read more

I just got back from a couple days of fishing with four guys from our company and four guys from Bayer Crop Science. We have done this before. I just hope none of those photos of me in what I thought were private, and yes perhaps compromising situations, ends up as some tawdry photo spread […] Read more

A Canadian ag/food policy group said this week the Canadian beef industry has to reduce its reliance on the U.S. market, but the point is if Canada doesn’t sell beef to the U.S. who else is going to buy it at that price. The message that the Canadian beef industry needs to reduce its reliance […] Read more