Federal tribunal reduces livestock trucker's penalty

Thursday, December 4, 2014

by SUSAN MANN

The Canadian Agricultural Review Tribunal has reduced the penalty a Walkerton-based livestock trucking company has to pay by 23 per cent for exposing spent hens to rainy, stormy weather and causing them undue suffering during transportation two years ago to Canada from the United States.

But the company, which must now pay a Canadian Food Inspection Agency administrative monetary penalty of $6,000 instead of the $7,800 originally assessed, questions the fairness of the federal livestock trucking monitoring system focusing mainly on truckers.

“The trouble is in the chain of events the first finger gets pointed at the transported,” says Little Rock Farm Trucking owner and secretary treasurer Mark Reuber. But, from the chicken catchers to the waits of up to 14 to 16 hours at the plant hens must endure before slaughter, there are plenty of other people and factors involved.

Moreover, inspectors only know how many dead on arrival birds there are on the load when they (the birds) are “taken to the kill floor. How do you know where the birds died?” he asks.

The penalty addresses an Oct. 29, 2012 incident during which 537 dead birds were discovered on a load of 7,680 spent hens the company had transported from Hillandale Farms in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania to Maple Lodge Farms in Brampton.

Reuber says his company isn’t going to appeal the $6,000 penalty.

The tribunal overturned two other administrative monetary penalties against the company. One was levied in 2012 and the other in 2013. Both penalties were connected to incidences in transporting spent hens to the Maple Lodge Farms Ltd. processing plant in Brampton from the United States.

Hearings for all three cases took place from May 5 to 7. The tribunal released its decisions in late October.

About how the tribunal ruled on the company’s three cases Reuber says, “in our opinion, it’s pretty clear we don’t think we were responsible for any of the deaths.”

Little Rock Farm Trucking has being transporting spent hens since 2004 and during that time period it has transported 16,203 loads of spent hens.

Spent hens are female birds about 17 months old and at the end of their productive lives as egg layers. Due to their use for continual egg production, spent hens have minimal feathers, depleted calcium reserves and typically weigh around four pounds, the decision says.

In Canada, laying hens enter production at about 19 weeks old and remain in production for a full year. The hens are kept in production slightly longer in the United States than in Canada but the decision didn’t say how long just that the longer the hen is in production the more spent she gets.

Another difference in spent hen dynamics is in eastern Canada and eastern United States the birds are sent for slaughter while in western Canada they are disposed of.

Owners of spent hens often find buyers “who will slaughter and utilize the hens for any value,” the decision says. The spent hens in these cases were being sold to Maple Lodge Farms by U.S. operators for one cent per pound.

In the Oct. 29, 2012 case, CFIA veterinarian Gurcharan Sandhu concluded the birds died in transit while some died on the truck. He did a post mortem on a sample of 10 dead birds and found the birds were wet “suggesting exposure to rain,” the decision says.

The outdoor air temperature for the 678-kilometre trip from Pennsylvania dropped from 10 degrees Celsius at the start of the drive to three degrees Celsius at arrival in Brampton, the decision says. The driver had applied both the left and right side tarps for the drive. The driver also described the weather as rain, the decision says.

While the decision states the outside air temperature during the drive was cooler than the recommended comfort zone for spent hens, Reuber testified proper tarping would provide “adequate temperature control for the load.” In addition, one can’t assume the outside air temperature is the same as the inside trailer temperature because of the tarps.

The tribunal found Sandhu to be a credible, articulate and knowledgeable expert witness and his conclusion that rainy, stormy weather caused the birds’ death was “honest and credible,” the decisions says, noting Little Rock Trucking should have cancelled the pick up “however impractical this may be in the spent hen transportation business” because weather reports issued the week prior to Oct. 29, 2012 were predicting that a bad storm, Hurricane Sandy, was approaching.

But Reuber says in response weather reports can’t predict how bad a storm is actually going to be.

Media spokespeople with the CFIA noted that the agency does not plan to appeal any of the decisions. BF