by BETTER FARMING STAFF
British Columbia’s milk marketing board is considering “regulatory options” for making the national code of practice for dairy cattle mandatory in that province, following the release earlier this month of a video showing animals being abused at a large dairy farm.
Don’t expect to see similar changes in here, says Graham Lloyd, a spokesman for Dairy Farmers of Ontario, which is satisfied its current policies of regular staff inspections and working with the Ontario SPCA protects the welfare of dairy animals in Ontario.
Earlier in June, the animal rights group Mercy For Animals released a covert video, shot by an “investigator,” showing workers at 3,500-cow Chilliwack Cattle Sales kicking cows and beating them with canes to get them in and out of a rotary milking parlour and using a frontend loader to lift a downed cow by her neck. The video, taken at the farm reported to be the largest dairy in Canada, showed cows with raw sores on their hind feet and legs and udders and hind quarters rubbing against moving metal bars in the rotary parlour. Mercy For Animals called for a boycott of products made by Montreal-based Saputo which owns Dairyland in British Columbia, and other provincial processors refused to purchase milk from Chilliwack Cattle Sales.
If British Columbia does make the code mandatory, however, it doesn’t mean that Ontario will follow suit.
“Our arrangement with the Ontario SPCA helps ensure enforcement,” says Lloyd, general counsel and director of communications for Dairy Farmers of Ontario.
The current system “with our field inspectors on routine inspections, complaint-based inspections, the regulation 761 with the annual health inspection from a licensed vet, together with the agreement from the OSPCA is an effective means of monitoring and maintaining welfare.
“Our view is you do need enforcement, not just a mandatory code of practice, to address those when they are in breach of that code.” Part of the arrangement is to undertake annual meetings with the Ontario SPCA and training of their inspectors. A DFO staff member accompanies an OSPCA inspector responding to a complaint and the milk board inspector informs the OSPCA when a problem is seen.
The BC Milk Marketing Board made “an interim decision” to cease delivering milk to processors from the Chilliwack farm and instead trucked it to a biodigester in Washington State where organic waste is turned into electricity, says CEO Bob Ingratta. Milk from dairy farms in British Columbia, as in Ontario, is pooled. Under provincial law, processors do not get to choose farms where the buy milk. The Chilliwack situation proved a challenge to that law.
“Since the processors didn’t want to take it, even though they are required to, we thought it was reasonable not to force the situation at that time and we made an interim decision,” Ingratta says. Processors are required to take qualifying milk that meets all of the standards for safety and quality. Animal welfare is not a criterion “at least not yet.” Ingratta adds: “We are sorting through how we should improve animal welfare and how we should make the code of practice mandatory in British Columbia. There are several regulatory options.
By law, processors must take milk from licensed dairies in the province and the milk must be shipped to them. “It was an extraordinary situation,” Ingratta says. We had to make some critical decision with respect to marketing policy and what we call orderly marketing. We have authority under the (provincial) Natural Product Marketing Act . . . for controlling production in any and all respect . . . We were very concerned about the situation.
“We felt that any animal abuse is totally unacceptable. We made an interim decision to not pick up the milk until we were satisfied that animal welfare issues were being addressed on the basis of production in any and all respects.”
Ingratta says three separate “independent” audits of animal welfare were conducted by various veterinarians in Canada and the United States, including Ontario’s Rob Tremblay, and then those audits were reviewed by a fourth veterinarian, from a clinic on Vancouver Island. On June 20 a final announcement was made that all of the province’s processors agreed to accept milk from the Chilliwack farm.
“All processors do not know where their milk comes from. It is pooled and we decide how to deliver it.” (That is also how milk is delivered in Ontario.)
Lloyd says “I don’t know how practical that is. It is certainly a standard that farms should look up to.”
DFO’s Lloyd is not aware of a problem with the technology of rotary milking parlours. He thinks that where a cow is trapped where she shouldn’t be, or won’t leave the parlour, the machine should be shut down. “That video displayed despicable and horrendous conduct. It was inhumane and from what I saw should be punished,” Lloyd adds.
Activists are calling for all dairy farms to have cameras in barns uploading video to the Internet where their activities are visible. “I don’t know how practical that is,” says Lloyd. Having the public watching 24/7 “is certainly a standard that farms should live up to.”
The BC SPCA is looking at laying charges against the eight workers in the video who have since been fired from the Chilliwack farm. BF
Comments
The size of the farm operation many times does have a direct affect as to how animals are treated . On a smaller operation most dairy farmers will know each cow by name , pet them and can stand among them and they will walk over to see their owner . He also works directly with the animals on a daily basis . On the bigger operations most owners are more concerned about the money and have hired help with no skin in the game that do the work and don't care about the animals the same . On large operations the cows are nkown as a number by the neck or ear tag . Many times smaller is better .
As a small dairy farmer for over 30 years,you respect the animals,care for them,even name them but they are there for a purpose and its not as pets! They are there to be milked for money and possibly sold for beef at the end of their milking days.In the end we are just as concerned about making money as the big guys, we just maybe take a more personel/hands on interest in it than the owners of the larger operations.
The video only confirms what l have thought for years,you can teach anyone how to milk or run a large Dairy operation like the one in BC but you can't teach someone how to have compassion and respect for the animals they work with,that has to be instilled in an individual from an early age.The old saying that patience is a virtue never seems to cross some young people's minds.
These young men should never have been working with cows the same way some people should never own a Dog or Cat.I find it a little ridiculous for the Animal Rights people to be calling for video camera's in dairy barns when there has been so many dog and cat abuse stories over the years and l don't recall ever hearing about a demand to put video camera's in pet owners homes?
Some people are not allowed to own pets which are animals . Same could and should happen for working animals also . To use the excuse on the fact that an employee did it is not and should not be condoned . The owner of the operation is ultimately responsible .
You simply can't group farm animals and pets together but l realize many non-farm people will try to do exactly that.
No one condones animal cruelty but training hundreds of cows to walk into their milking stations is not like training the family dog! Patience is required but its not always enough.Certainly these young men in the video crossed the line but there has been far worse pet abuse that has not made national headlines like this case.
I fully support ALL farms across Canada having a MANDATORY National Code of Practice for dairy cattle. It is very obvious, that too many bad apples in the farming industry cannot and do not regulate themselves properly. The milk marketing board included. The Chilliwack video is just one of many videos of dairy cattle being grossly abused. Graham Lloyd, let me ask you this, if you believe dairy farms are not subjecting their cattle to abuse, what do you have to hide? Why would you not want to put live streaming cameras in the barns so that anyone can check in and watch 24/7? If Jeff Kooyman, owner of Chilliwack Cattle Company, is so sure this was an "isolated" incident, and he knew nothing about it, then he should have nothing to hide in the future, correct? Lastly, the law needs to be changed that processors like Saputo CAN refuse to take milk from farms where their is abuse.
Even if the owners did not know of the precise abuse depicted in the video (which is highly unlikely) could they not see the wounds on the animals? Do vets not regularly inspect the cows in an operation of this size? If not, then I believe the owners are lying about their lack of involvement and something needs to change to ensure that wounds and injuries are addressed and investigated. There are some lousy, cruel people in this world and a lot that think it doesn't matter if it's "just an animal" being abused.
The owner (s) should have their quota stripped from them with no compensation . They should have to gift the would be funds from the sale of the quota and the cows to some charity that can prove that even it is worthy of the dollars .
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