Late March internet Canadian Beef Industry Town Hall was productive

The food chain must go on despite the pandemic and as such on March 26, a Canadian Beef Industry Town Hall was held on Zoom.

“We continue to work very closely with all sectors of the beef cattle industry across Canada to address the various challenges that COVID-19 is presenting to us,” Dennis Laycraft, the Executive Vice President of the Canadian Cattlemen’s Association, said. “Firstly, we are continuing to focus our efforts on helping stop the spread of COVID-19 and we are also developing protocols to allow our industry and the frontline food workers to do their jobs safely and efficiently ensure the safe supply of food across our nation.”

Overall, Laycraft said, the beef supply chain is functioning quite well. Those in the beef industry,

Laycraft says, have actually seen increased production occurred to meet the increased demand that has largely shifted to retail demand as a result of the impact COVID-19 is having on businesses.

“If you go to our website: cattle.ca, there are extensive resources on various protocols that are in place to ensure this and talking more specifically about meeting the needs of Canadians and keeping product on the shelves, not just in Canada but around the world,” Laycraft said.

Laycraft firmly emphasized that Canada has made a commitment to ensure that beef is available on the counters, not just in Canada, but also in those key markets that Canada regularly services around the world.

The Canadian beef industry, Laycraft said, is also working to make sure that as these various provincial rules come into effect and that products flow seamlessly across the country.

“The retail demand for beef is strong right now and we're working extra shifts in order to meet those demands,” Laycraft said. “We're also on the production side in the middle of what we'll refer to as bulk sales season. Overall, we've so far seen the sales remain quite consistent with last year and we feel very good about how our industry has worked together to incorporate best management practices across our vast country.”

Laycraft said that the beef industry has identified several enhancements to business risk management programs and are working to ensure that there are solutions to meet needs in contingency plans moving forward.

The Canadian Cattlemen’s Association, has had good discussions with the Canada Food Inspection Agency to ensure they are able to meet needs within food production and they have asked the federal government to recognize these are extraordinary times right now.

“We've asked that COVID-19 be named a natural disaster under the Ag Recovery Program,” Laycraft said. “That opens up some options there that aren't normally available.”

Laycraft said the complete summary of recommendations is available on cattle.ca.

Janice Tranberg, President and CEO of the National Cattle Feeders Association, also spoke about how the COVID-19 crisis is affecting temporary foreign workers and the need for those workers at this time.

“It's very clear that the government of Canada understands the need for temporary foreign workers,” Tranberg said. “Late last week, the government announced that temporary foreign workers will be allowed to enter the country, but work is still underway to make the necessary regulatory changes to allow that to occur.”

One of the issues already identified, Tranberg said, is working with the source countries where temporary foreign workers are coming in from and the international travel challenges associated with COVID-19. What is known, however, is that temporary foreign workers enter Canada through the four ports that are approved. If they arrive without symptoms, they will be allowed to continue on within Canada to their final destination but will then have to selfisolate for 14 days like everyone else. Temporary foreign workers, Tranberg said, will also need to practice social distancing. Laycraft added that any workers who are symptomatic will be immediately quarantined.

“The good news is that that for workers that are currently in Canada, any LMI permits that are currently available will be increased from one year to two years automatically,” Tranberg said.

Tranberg said that last year, there were about 60,000 temporary foreign workers in Canada and there was still a severe shortage of workers in our country. As a result, the industry certainly needs everybody who is willing to work. Those in the industry have heard that there been an increase in applications for farm position, which is really good news.

“It's a great way to introduce some new low skilled workers into the benefits working within the agriculture industry,” Tranberg said. “If people are interested in choosing agriculture as a career choice, we encourage them to because there’s lots of rewarding opportunities.

Laycraft also stated that protocols have been worked out at the feedlot level to help in management of the auction markets because that is a place where many gathered in the past. The requirements, however, are different in each province and the industry is working to structure those regulations so they are as consistent as possible, Laycraft said.

“The entire industry has pulled together in a non-competitive approach,” Laycraft said. “Everybody is sharing best practices between making sure we keep the best a set of measures in place, keeping our frontline food workers as healthy as possible, and keeping our farmers, ranchers and their workers as healthy as possible.”

Tranberg added on the farms, people are also looking at triaging what things they need to be doing in order to make sure that their animals are cared for and working to minimize contact within the farm as much as possible. One of the things that farms are doing, Tranberg said, is having people work in teams so that if someone does get sick, then it's isolated to just a few people as opposed to the whole farm.

With the beef supply chain, the industry has worked closely with, the meat processors to make sure needs are being met. That involves involve a lot of discussions with Beef Canada’s national regulator. Every pound of beef that's sold in this going to do a retail is federally inspected or provincially inspected if it's a provincial retail, Laycraft said.

Beef Canada, Laycraft said, is working to ensure that inspection services are fully maintained and that they have been able to operate plants at full capacity with most moving into extra shifts during the week. Everyone is also working to maintain business continuity..

Laycraft also indicated Beef Canada has had conversations with various exporters and China is starting to open up again in regards to food service; they are simply implementing more social distancing measures along with it and sales involving Japan are also moving along. At this stage, Canada Beef is working for their exporters.