Location, location, location. Banff Pork Seminar’s return to its original home has received rave reviews all around.

Last year, Chairman Bob Kemp announced to crowds at the 2015 seminar that he and fellow organizers had successfully negotiated a three-year deal with the Banff Springs Hotel after the expiry of the contract with the Banff Centre. This year, Kemp opened the 2016 seminar with an announcement that it had been organized around a theme: Honouring the past, embracing the future.

“It is our 45th anniversary. We have returned to the location of the first Banff Pork Seminar and it only seemed fitting that our theme this year recognize our history and our future,” Kemp said in his opening remarks.

Delegates arrived for the 2016 seminar to find that there had been some major changes at the world-renowned hotel in the 20 years since Banff Pork outgrew the Banff Springs facilities. Chief among them was the construction of a conference centre with plenty of room for meetings and connected to the hotel by a fully enclosed walkway.

Delegates found the meeting rooms to be quite comfortable, and the easy access appears to have encouraged much better attendance to a number of break-out sessions that, in previous years, had been held in a separate building at Banff Centre, said Michael Dyck, who shared program directing duties with fellow professor Ruurd Zijlstra from the University of Alberta’s department of Agricultural, Food and Nutritional Sciences. Delegates were no longer required to put on their coats and boots to head down the hill for some of the break-out sessions, and most took advantage of the conference room rates offered at the Banff Springs rather than booking rooms downtown. As part of its contract with Banff Pork, the Banff Springs had extended discounted room rates for the full week of the conference, giving delegates and their families an opportunity to stay an extra day or two and enjoy some time off in the mountains at less than half of the regular cost.

Registrations and check-ins moved along smoothly on Tuesday afternoon and evening, despite the large numbers of delegates arriving on the site, bringing a total of 673 people registered by the time the seminar opened on the morning of Wednesday, Jan. 13.

Dyck said as the 2016 seminar was wrapping up the next day that the ease of access, plus having all the meetings in the same general area, may have accounted for the unusually high attendance during presentations by the four finalists competing for the R.O. Ball Young Scientist Award.

Graduate students Amanda Perri of Guelph University, Jing Jing Cabahug and Milan Obradovich from the University of Saskatchewan and University of Alberta student Anita Ahiney Laryea squared off for the final round with 20-minute presentations followed by a question-and-answer session in a room crammed with experts from a variety of pork industry sectors.

Perri was awarded first place along with a cheque for $5,000 for her work on the association between zinc-oxide supplementation and post-weaning anemia. She found a definite link when high levels of heavy metals are included in the diet and suggested that further studies are needed to determine optimum levels of zinc oxide, which is administered to reduce diarrhea after weaning.

Cabahug won second place and $250 for her work on assessing cleanliness of transport trailers. Cabahug determined that a process utilizing bioluminescence can find lingering pathogens much more quickly than microbiological testing and can also be used to determine hot spots that need special attention during washing and disinfecting of livestock trailers.

Obradovich presented his findings on strategies for vaccinating against bacteria that cause ileitis while Laryea outlined a study she is conducting on consumer reactions to animal welfare and whether they would be willing to pay extra for welfare-friendly pork.

This year, seminar organizers had two different recipients for the annual F.X.Aherne Prize for Innovative Pork Production, which recognizes creative solutions for common problems experienced in breeding, raising and shipping hogs.

Sam Gelowitz from Prairie Swine Centre won a plaque and jacket for his development of a carcass removal cart that enables one person to load and move a full-size animal safely and without assistance. “We wanted to come up with a concept that, for the employees, was easy to use,” said Gelowitz. He put a handle, a battery and a winch on a metal floor lift that is big enough to carry a sow for disposal.

Gelowitz said he would be happy to build carts for other producers and is also willing to share the design with those who would like to build their own.

Steve Brandt, president of Steve’s Livestock Transport, earned his plaque and jacket for yet another innovation in livestock hauling – a hydraulic floor lift that eases loading and disinfection of his trailers.

Brandt said the lift raises and lowers the decks within the trailer, making it easier to load the trailer and increasing the trailer’s capacity. A locking mechanism ensures that the decks will not drop unexpectedly and the hydraulic ram is located underneath rather than inside the trailer, so it is easier to keep it clean.

The unit is designed with small ventilation holes to make sure there is no danger of an animal catching and injuring a foot or snout, said Brandt.

Delegates to the 2016 Banff Pork Seminar were offered two days of intensive learning, including morning plenary sessions with internationally-recognized speakers including Michael McCain of Maple Leaf Foods, leading-edge animal welfare specialist Temple Grandin and Martin Rice, executive director of the Canadian Pork Council.

CPC chair Rick Bergmann took an opportunity during the Thursday plenary session to announce that Rice will retire in April and to encourage delegates to be proud of their industry and make an effort to tell their story.

Canada currently employs 31,000 people on 7,000 farms, representing a sow herd of about 1.2 million, said Bergmann, a Manitoba-based hog producer. Over the past 25 years, Canada’s pork exports have grown from .25 million tonnes at a value of $683 million to 1.15 million tonnes worth $3.7 billion, he said.

“You have a product that is sought after. All of you have a very significant role in making the Canadian pork story a success,” said Bergmann. “Because of these 1.2 million sows, you producers are the start of an economic engine that needs to be talked about more often. It’s being talked about now, but it has to be ramped up,” he said.

Plenary speakers and break-out sessions offered delegates some insight in how they might share in telling that story. Banff Pork Seminar is a project jointly operated by Alberta Pork, Alberta Agriculture and Forestry and the University of Alberta.

Planning is now underway for the 2017 seminar, set for Jan. 10-12 at the Fairmont Banff Springs Hotel. The Banff Springs, modelled after Scottish castles, was the brainchild of William Cornelius Van Horne, president of the Canadian Pacific Railway while its tracks were being punched across the Canadian Shield, through the Prairies and into the Rocky Mountains. Van Horne felt a grand hotel would draw more tourists to take the train to Banff where they could luxuriate in its hot springs and mountain vistas.

The Banff Springs became first in a series of resort hotels built and operated by the railway company, including the Chateau Lake Louise, the Palliser in Calgary and the Chateau Frontenac in Quebec City. The Banff Springs was declared a national historic site in 1995 and its operations were taken over by Fairmont Hotels in 1999. •

— By PHC Staff