Behind the Lines - April 2015
Monday, April 6, 2015
Food safety and its enforcement in Ontario are the subject of this month's cover story. Writer Barry Wilson found that in spite of the ongoing complaints about burgeoning red tape, paperwork and bureaucracy from individual farmers and farm groups, mainstream commercial producers have little sympathy for "outriders" who don't follow the same rules that they do to ensure the food they produce is safe – and distributed in a safe manner. Maintaining the public's confidence in the food from Ontario's farms is paramount to maintaining markets for their products both here in the province and elsewhere.
Minister Jeff Leal asserts that food safety is a priority of his ministry as well, and says enforcement efforts will be spared from cuts as all ministries look inwards and shift priorities and spending to fight a growing provincial deficit. Numbers always help to tell a story. But, in this case, Wilson found numbers on food safety enforcement were very difficult to come by.
The federal government's food safety rules override all, of course, and a planned revamp of federal rules, announced in late 2012, won't be finished before a federal election later this year. The government says more consultation is needed and it is determined to get the changes right. Wilson's story starts on page 12.
Cost cutting by governments of safety net supports is a key concern of farm groups in this federal election year. Farm incomes have been fairly robust in recent years, so farm groups such as the Canadian Federation of Agriculture feel that key changes in programs, such as AgriStability, have yet to be felt. Some farmers assert that the cost associated with fees and filling out the paperwork will never be returned. That story, also by Wilson, starts on page 28.
Two stories by Mike Beaudin involve no paperwork. One describes the role of smartphones in farm safety and the other provides an update on Twitter. Those stories appear on pages 44 and 46 respectively.
Congratulations are due to University of Guelph Prof. Mary Ruth McDonald and the Holland Marsh Muck Research Station which has received an international industry award for its Integrated Pest Management program. Beaudin writes about this overlooked ag resource starting on page 34.
The solution to last month's Crop Scene Investigation is presented on page 40. The popular CSI feature returns in the fall.
There is a story appearing in another magazine we need to mention. "Birdman: The Pigeon King and the Ponzi Scheme That Shook Canada" appeared in The New York Times Magazine on March 6. The article about Arlan Galbraith, Ontario's Pigeon King, now serving a prison sentence for fraud, does contain errors but is brilliantly written by Jon Mooallem. He describes Better Farming's role in part as "a heroic piece of public-interest journalism."
Not even that formidable magazine, however, with its 1.6 million readers, was a match for Pigeon King salesman Mark DeWitt, who reportedly got part of Mooallem's story killed by telling the Times' fact-checker he wasn't the disbarred New Brunswick lawyer named Mark DeWitt who robbed banks, stole from clients and was outed years ago in the pages of Better Farming magazine. BF
ROBERT IRWIN & DON STONEMAN