The province on May 29 announced the deadlines for grain and oilseed producers to submit their completed RMP applications and make any coverage changes — previously set at May 10 — has now been moved to June 30.

For livestock producers, the deadline to submit applications or request coverage changes, previously extended to April 15 for the 2023 program year, has now also been reset to June 30.

Agricorp, the province’s farm program delivery agency, said May 29 the latest deadline move is meant to “give farmers more time to evaluate their coverage decisions” and more flexibility in making those decisions.

That said, to be eligible for RMP: Grains and Oilseeds, grower customers will still also need to have Production Insurance coverage — the application deadline for which remained May 10.

Ontario’s RMP, set up as a permanent program in 2011, is intended to help farmers manage risks beyond their control, such as fluctuating costs and market prices.

The program is intended as a complement to Production Insurance, which insures against production losses, and AgriStability, a whole-farm ag income stabilization program. — Glacier FarmMedia Network

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And that’s exactly the animal Danish beef farmer Kristian Sorensen wants to purchase for his Tranbjerg Ostergaard farm located near the town of Arre in Jutland, western Denmark.

Each year Kristian produces around 4,000 calves for veal, which are then slaughtered at the local Danish Crown abattoir in Holsted. The calves are all bought from 25 local dairy farmers which ensure Kristian has a continuity of supply for his business.

Plus, Kristian’s business is a good outlet for the dairy farms to sell their crossbred calves for more than the traditional dairy-bred bull calves.

Seven employees work on the farm that extends to 600 hectares on which he grows cereals, rapeseed, maize and grass.

“Back in 2010 I bought half this farm from my father and then nine years later I bought the other half,” Kristian says. “We began producing 1,000 calves for Danish Crown but since then have expanded the business by building new barns and now rear 4,000 calves for veal production each year.”

This particular Danish Crown veal production program is called Danish Calf and operates with a specific set of guidelines the 160 farmers that supply the calves must follow. They must be born and reared in Denmark to the highest welfare standards before slaughtering at local abattoirs, which are on average less than 2.5 hours travel from the farms.

Production protocols

The calves must be fed healthy and natural feed such as colostrum, fresh straw feed or roughage without the use of antibiotic growth promoters.

Other standards include correct slaughter weights, body shape and fat coverage measures as guided under the program.

“We buy the calves at about three weeks old,” Kristian says. “I have a constant supply from 25 local dairy farmers from whom I buy all my calves. In fact, right now we have 2,700 calves on the farm and I just bought in another 175 calves.”

Supply continues throughout the year. The goal is to rear the calves until they are nine months old and have reached the target slaughter weights as set out by the Danish Calf program.

Calves are fed milk for the first two months and are then switched to dry feed and roughage until they are ready for slaughter.

“In Denmark, we have a national calf price that is set to all farmers,” Kristian says. “As an example, for a Holstein calf crossbred with a beef sire weighing about 60kgs I would pay 100 euros (C$135) for that animal across the board. However, I currently pay a bonus for the best male calves, on top of the basic price. This gives the farmer a clear economic incentive to use more beef cattle.”

All the calves are vaccinated when they arrive on the farm. Kristian says the crossbred calves have better feed efficiency than the purebred dairy bull calves.

“Two years ago around 20 per cent of the calves I was buying were crossbreeds, but that has now increased to around 60 per cent, and will rise even further over the next few years. We generally slaughter the calves at nine months of age when they reach about 205 kilograms slaughter weight. Generally, we receive around five euros per kilogram (D$3.06 per pound) deadweight for the calves when slaughtered.

“Having more crossbreeds and fewer purebred dairy cattle benefits my bottom line and the climate,” he says.

Until the calves are three months old, they receive one kilogram of bought-in dry feed per day, which rises to 1.2-1.3kgs when they are five months old, levelling out to about 1kg up until nine months old and slaughter. All the calves receive around two kgs of fresh straw per head per day as well.

Best beef combinations

Since he has participated in feeding trials, Kristian is well aware of which beef breed combinations perform best. Measured quantities of feed were fed to a specified batch of calves, using feed troughs equipped with feed intake and behaviour-monitoring technology. The feed intakes were then compared to the daily liveweight gain of the calves, and results calculated.

Kristian prefers to buy in Belgian Blue, Charolais or Angus beef breeds crossbred with the dairy breeds, as they tend to thrive better in his system.

While most of the calves for the veal production program are males, he also runs a heifer program, keeping them longer to produce red meat.

These heifers fall under Danish Crown’s new Premium Heifer concept, which dictates the cattle must be fed with a high proportion of roughage and must be slaughtered at 18 to 20 months of age. He hopes to deliver around 600 heifers per year to this special program.

While four people work in the calf system, another three split their time between the heifer program and fieldwork and farm and machinery maintenance.

With so many calves on his farm, there are certain to be some casualties but using good welfare practices, and fresh food these are kept to a minimum.

“We have a mortality rate of around three to four per cent each year,” Kristian says. “All the calves are well looked after on our farm and we try to keep losses as low as possible.”

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The North American Meat Institute, whose members include processors such as Tyson Foods and retailers including Walmart, said enforcing Proposition 12 would hurt producers and consumers by significantly increasing their costs.

It also said the measure, which passed last November with 63 per cent of the vote, was an “overreach” that violated the U.S. Constitution’s Commerce Clause by requiring out-of-state producers to comply with California’s rules or face a sales ban.

“Prop 12 hurts the family on a budget with higher prices for pork, veal and eggs, and unfairly punishes livestock producers outside of California by forcing them to spend millions more just to access California markets,” Meat Institute president Julie Anna Potts said in a statement.

Spokesmen for California Attorney General Xavier Becerra and the state’s Department of Food and Agriculture did not immediately respond to requests for comment. A spokesman for the state’s Department of Public Health declined to comment.

In its complaint filed in Los Angeles federal court, the Meat Institute is seeking an injunction against the sales ban targeting out-of-state veal and pork.

The group’s more than 700 members also include packers and processors such as Cargill, JBS USA, Smithfield Foods and Wegmans, as well as Chipotle, Target and Amazon.com’s Whole Foods.

Proposition 12, or the Prevention of Cruelty to Farm Animals Act, sets minimum space requirements for calves raised for veal, breeding pigs and egg-laying hens, and bans the sale of raw veal, pork or eggs from animals enclosed in too little space.

Calves must have 43 square feet (four square metres) of floor space by 2020, pigs must have 24 square feet by 2022, and hens must have one square foot by 2020 and be “cage-free” by 2022.

Proponents said the measure would phase out extreme means of confining animals.

Animal rights groups were split. The Humane Society of the United States backed the measure, while People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals opposed it, saying it did not go far enough.

— Reporting for Reuters by Jonathan Stempel in New York.

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The company said Tuesday it expected to have the new brand — Fontaine Family, named for the company’s founding family — available via “most major supermarket banners” by week’s end.

With the new product line, “we want to address consumers directly and help them appreciate the subtle and refined taste of veal, but also raise awareness on the many benefits this lean and nutritious meat provides,” Montpak president Alex Fontaine said in a release.

To “meet our customers’ needs,” he said, the line includes “ready-to-cook products made from fresh meat, preservative-free, gluten-free and containing a minimum of salt. They are quick to cook and have a maximum of five ingredients.”

“All our animals are raised without the use of hormones, in accordance with the highest standards of animal welfare and our milk-fed veal is GMO-free,” Delimax president Fabien Fontaine said in the same release. “We are proud to stand alone in offering this milk-fed veal product.”

Asked via email about the specifics of the new veal line’s non-GMO label claim, the company replied that its packaging notes the livestock used for the new product line are non-GMO-fed.

“We do control our source of feed by growing our own solid feed. This is how we can assure strict controls that differentiate ourselves form other producers of milk-fed veal.”

The company noted it meets Canadian rules to make a non-GMO fed claim, but it has developed its own logo, since “no federal certification logo… exists that we could use.”

The Delimax-Montpak group, which bills itself as “North America’s veal leader,” sources livestock from 105 company-owned farms and affiliates and owns or is affiliated with companies up and down the meat value chain, including Abattoir Saint-Germain, Transport Dofax, processing and distributing arms Montpak and Catelli Bros. and milk replacer manufacturers NRV and Serval.

“We really waited until we had all the right elements in place to ensure the success of the launch: farmland, feed production, livestock and processing plants,” Donald Fontaine, president of the Delimax-Montpak group’s transportation division, said in the same release.

“This allows us to ensure that we have a high level of quality control throughout the production line through all stages of the process.” — Glacier FarmMedia Network

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Delimax-Montpak Group announced Friday it has an agreement in principle to buy St-Hyacinthe-based Ecolait for total consideration of $50 million.

Delimax-Montpak said Friday the deal “will allow the veal sector in the province, and in the rest of Canada, to remain competitive internationally.”

The deal is expected to keep Ecolait’s Quebec veal production and processing operations in business, including seven company-owned farms and a Montreal-area slaughtering and processing plant at La Plaine, employing about 200 people.

The deal will also maintain the company’s supply agreements with almost 70 affiliated farms supplying livestock to the La Plaine plant, Delimax-Montpak said.

In business since 1979, Ecolait filed for federal creditor protection Nov. 2 in the wake of what its trustee, Richter Advisory Group, described as “significant financial difficulties” including losses last year and each year from 2008 through 2014.

The trustee cited Ecolait management as attributing those operating losses to 18 years of contraction in the veal industry and an “unsuccessful” bid to enter the pork business through a subsidiary. Delft Blue, which operated a pork processing plant at Utica, N.Y., has been liquidating its assets since July.

Ecolait’s secured creditors include National Bank, with whom the company has $20.5 million in liabilities, and Farm Credit Canada, owed $4.9 million. In all, the trustee reported $63.6 million owed to secured and unsecured creditors.

Delimax-Montpak, which first approached Ecolait about a deal in late 2016, was considered the “best party in position to make an offer,” given the size of the sale, industry regulations and a “lack of other potential interested parties,” Richter reported.

‘Weakened’

“It had become clear that major changes were needed in our industry segment,” Delimax-Montpak CEO Fabien Fontaine said in Friday’s release.

“In recent years, government cutbacks to farm credit programs, transatlantic trade deals, and the changes requested to our farming practices have severely weakened the financial capacity of Quebec’s veal production and processing companies,” he said.

Specifically, Delimax said, the province’s farm financing agency, la Financiere Agricole du Quebec (FADQ), “slashed” farm credit programs for milk-fed veal and has “severely restricted” its contributions to programs available to large companies.

Also, the company said, Canada’s free trade pact with the European Union allows EU veal producers to export products to Canada “without paying the nearly 30 per cent customs duties to which they were previously subjected.”

EU exporters, Delimax said, “are also not governed by the same rules on the use of certain products” and EU calf producers have “benefited from generous subsidies that have enabled it to enhance its farming infrastructures.”

Delimax-Montpak formed through a separate consolidation in 2015, when the Fontaine family, which owns St-Hyacinthe-based Delimax, bought out the stake of the Buksbaum family in veal processor Montpak International. The Buksbaums, who founded Montpak over 50 years ago, had set up Montpak International with the Fontaines in 1995.

A deal for Ecolait’s assets will boost Delimax-Montpak’s production and processing capacity by nearly 50 per cent, Delimax-Montpak said.

Combined with Ecolait’s operations, Delimax-Montpak said it will own 100 corporate farms, work with almost 270 other farms, operate processing plants in both Canada and the U.S., employ about 1,000 people and book combined revenues of about $425 million. — AGCanada.com Network

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La Financiere agricole du Quebec (FADQ) announced Friday that its board had agreed to end ASRA (Assurance stabilisation des revenus agricoles) coverage for Quebec’s milk-fed veal calf operations, effective Jan. 1, 2016.

Affected producers, after that date, will be eligible for coverage instead under the Agri-Quebec and Agri-Quebec Plus programs which, combined with the federal/provincial AgriStability and AgriInvest programs, will provide “advantageous” coverage levels, FADQ said.

FADQ’s decision follows “several months” of review, through which the agency said the sector has shown it would be impossible to objectively establish cost-of-production and sale price values — a situation the agency said is due in part to the lack of competition and “strong concentration” of sector activities.

According to La Terre de chez nous, the news organ of Quebec farm group l’Union des producteurs agricoles (UPA), most of the province’s veal operations are tightly integrated with its two main processing players, Ecolait and Delimax, which together handle about 90 per cent of veal slaughter volume.

According to the provincial cattle producers’ federation, Quebec today has about 160 veal calf producers, mainly in the St-Hyacinthe, Bois-Francs and Quebec City areas. A typical veal operation, the federation said, currently produces about 777 calves per year.

ASRA in 2014 based its coverage on 2008 values and production costs derived from an FADQ survey of specialized farms selling between 500 and 1,500 calves per year, for compensation of $130.20 per calf, or $106.62 per 100 kilograms.

FADQ said it had sought the help of veal sector representatives in recent months to show how the sector could fit into the ASRA model, but the agency’s analysis “established the impossibility of doing so.”

Expanding Agri-Quebec and Agri-Quebec Plus instead “will allow us to maintain support to this sector,” FADQ chair Diane Vincent said in a release Friday.

Agri-Quebec, a provincially funded program, is a risk management program complementary to AgriInvest. Agri-Quebec Plus, meanwhile, boosts the coverage level under AgriStability to 80 per cent, up from 70, for farms whose products aren’t eligible for ASRA. Farms eligible for AgriStability are automatically also enrolled in Agri-Quebec Plus.

The agency plans to “personally” contact affected producers to evaluate their options under Agri-Quebec and Agri-Quebec Plus, FADQ CEO Robert Keating said in Friday’s release.

The agency will also be in touch with banks and other financial institutions to clarify any concerns about the sector’s future viability, he added. — AGCanada.com Network

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St. Hyacinthe-based Ecolait, which markets veal under the Vivo brand, said Friday it’s bought the Le Veau Charlevoix brand, for an undisclosed sum, “in order to relaunch it.”

Le Veau Charlevoix, which began as founder Jean-Robert Audet’s veal cattle operation in the Charlevoix region in 1980, expanded into the slaughter and processing business in 1995 with a plant at Clermont, about 130 km northeast of Quebec City.

But the company shuttered its slaughter plant starting in September, citing a drop in consumer demand for veal as fallout from alleged mistreatment of livestock by certain producers in the veal business.

Le Veau Charlevoix, quoted in court documents in October, said it found the corresponding drop in retail veal prices “difficult to absorb.”

When the Clermont packing plant closed, the company said it planned to focus on seeking new investment and selling its inventory at retail.

But the company that month entered creditor protection, avoiding bankruptcy after its secured creditors accepted a proposal in which they’d get ownership of the Clermont abattoir’s building and equipment, while unsecured creditors would get the net proceeds from sales of remaining inventory.

The plant employees’ union in November said the Clermont plant’s owners hoped to line up new investors and relaunch operations as soon as possible.

A spokesperson for Ecolait said the deal announced Friday gives it the Charlevoix brand, the Charlevoix specification books and the company’s contracts with veal producers.

The provincially-certified Clermont plant “does not match” with Ecolait’s business model and its plan for the Charlevoix brand — a plan which in the short term involves increasing Charlevoix veal production tenfold, the spokesperson said.

Le Veau Charlevoix, on its website, said its products are produced mainly from Holstein cattle and occasionally from Limousin or Bleu Blanc Beige (BBB).

“New farms”

As for Audet, Ecolait said he has agreed to work with the company on the Veau Charlevoix brand’s redevelopment. Ecolait, in its release Friday, quoted him as saying the Charlevoix brand’s production has to be “thoroughly modernize(d)” for the brand to grow.

“Ecolait’s modern meat packing plant, its production plan certified by federal authorities and its strong distribution network will contribute to the maintenance and development of new family farms in all of Quebec’s regions,” Audet said in the release.

Charlevoix milk- and grain-fed veal, Ecolait said, is raised using production methods “designed specifically to meet consumer expectations.”

The Charlevoix products, the company said, “will soon be available again in grocery stores across Quebec,” noting the deal furthers Audet’s aim of developing and expanding the brand in all regions of the province.

“Le Veau Charlevoix is recognized as a symbol of quality not just in the Charlevoix region, but throughout the province of Quebec, and Ecolait will always be passionate about offering veal products of the highest quality,” Ecolait CEO Mario Maillet said in the same release. — AGCanada.com Network

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