There’s only one answer when your employer offers you a chance to see how your industry looks from the other side of the globe. So, when Australian nutritionist Haylee Clifford learned that her employer had a bit of funding available for a research project, she did some digging and decided she would like to attend the 2019 Banff Pork Seminar, held January 9-11.

“I just knew that I wanted to see Canada at some point. I had no idea about anything to do with Banff, so I thought, let’s see how it goes. It’s beautiful. I’ve fallen in love with the place.”

Knee surgery precluded her from hitting the ski slopes, but Clifford came a few days early to make sure that she could enjoy some of the other tourist attractions available in the area before heading home to Adelaide on January 12.

Her biggest worry before arriving in Banff was that she would have to know some French. So, she was pleased to learn that Alberta’s leading tourist area is predominately English speaking; with enough young Australians staffing the hotels, shops and restaurants to make her feel quite at home.

Her early arrival allowed Clifford the time she would need to visit some Hutterite farms, which she found quite different from anything in Australia. “I really liked to see their setup and how their technology is so advanced compared to us. In Australia, a lot of the family-owned piggeries have very old infrastructure.”

One of the major differences is in the climate control systems, said Clifford. Climate control inside the Australian barns is not as effective or efficient, which causes quite a problem with fertility, she said.

Clifford is already thinking about coming back to work in Canada, vowing to set a work visa in motion as soon as she gets home.

“It’s been an awesome experience, and everybody has been so lovely.”

Every year, Banff Pork Seminar sees a healthy contingent of delegates who have come from all over the world to learn, network and share their expertise. This year, the total of 742 registered delegates, plus sponsors and exhibitors, came from countries including the United Kingdom, Mexico, Denmark, the Netherlands, Uruguay, the United States and, of course, at least one from Australia.

The numbers are about the same as last year, said conference coordinator Ashley Steeple. A change in format from previous years seems to have worked well, providing some extra space for people to move around, said Steeple.

In previous years, the plenary sessions had been held in the largest of the ballrooms with breakouts held in smaller rooms and in a lecture theatre on the lower floor. This year, the smaller rooms were put together as an exhibit area while the largest of the ballrooms was opened for the main sessions, and then divided into three smaller rooms for breakout sessions.

The change did bring a few complaints from delegates who found that the temporary walls did not provide an adequate sound barrier and others who felt rushed because people were coming in for lunch while sessions were still running.

Steeple said she had not yet seen the evaluations, nor had she heard any of those comments herself.

Agricultural engineer Kase van Ittersum, representing Calgary-based New Standard West, said he has been exhibiting at Banff Pork Seminar for roughly 15 years.

His only issue was that people seemed largely unaware of a reception held outside the exhibit area after Wednesday’s sessions had wrapped up.

“There was a bar there, but it was set up too late, so most people had left already,” said van Ittersum.

He said the change in setup worked well, estimating that his booth got about the same level of traffic as he had seen in previous years.

“The big difference was coming from the other venue (to) here. This is way better,” he said.

BPS had been held for a number of years at the Banff Centre but was moved four years ago after the Fairmont Banff Springs successfully negotiated a new deal, based on the availability of a new conference centre it had built on the hotel site after the seminar was first moved to the Banff Centre.

The contract with Fairmont Banff Springs was renewed last year, ensuring that the seminar will remain at the same venue for at least two more years.

Allan King, president and scientific director at Karyotekk, said the relatively balmy weather was a pleasant change from last year, when temperatures dropped below -30C.

Karyotekk is a University of Guelph service, offering a variety of genetic technologies to diagnose chromosome abnormalities, variations, and instability in domestic animals for livestock producers, veterinarians and researchers.

Newcomers Paul Anderson of UK-based UV-Safe and Sean Dougherty of Jarvis Canada in Calgary shared some booth space to market their gear.

Dougherty sells specialized tools for the meat industry. “In all honesty, it has been pretty good,” said Dougherty, a former Londoner now living in Calgary. He said the only factor that irked him was the charge for additional sales reps attending the show, which has now been looked after. He said it would have worked better for him to have rented two spaces and brought more gear. Dougherty also was disappointed in the quality of the guest rooms, stating that his room was too small and, on two days of his stay there was no hot water for his morning shower, despite being booked into a suite on the exclusive Gold Floor.

Anderson was there to market an air cleaner that creates a plasma field to destroy viruses and bacteria and includes an electrostatic filter to remove larger particles.

“(The plasma field process) is called molecular ripping – it disassembles them into atoms, so all that’s blown out of the unit is atoms.” There are various products available that turn odours into other products, but do not eliminate the harmful factors, he said.

“These are the first two units in Canada. Jarvis, who are the world’s largest abattoir equipment supplier, are supplying this to the Canadian market,” said Anderson. The machines were developed for use in the health care industry, including laboratories and operating theatres, he said. His target market in Canada is anyone who breeds animals and has a risk for virus or respiratory illness.

Genetics producer Kyla Ripley, general manager of Carlo Genetics in Ste. Anne, Manitoba was attending Banff Pork for the third time. Ripley said she found the sound from adjoining rooms to be quite distracting during the breakout sessions and was also bothered somewhat by people walking into the rooms for lunch while the sessions were still running.

“I’d rather that they left the ballrooms wide open so that we had lunch there and went different places for the talks. I think it fell short, in my opinion anyway,” said Ripley.

Those issues aside, Ripley said Banff Pork is “a very good conference” with opportunities for her to network with her people and her customers as well as take a bit of a vacation. She said her husband came along this year, so they arrived a day early and planned to leave a day late so they could enjoy some of the area attractions. She said she will definitely be back next year.

“The conferences I go to are international, because it’s specialized to my field,” she said.

Ripley said she started in the genetics business while writing her thesis for a swine professor from Dalhousie University, where she studied animal science with an emphasis on genetics. She moved to Manitoba in 1994 and started work at a boar stud, becoming manager after three months. She has been manager at Carlo for about three years. Ontario swine producer Amy Cronin, chair of the 2019 organizing committee, said in her introduction that this edition of Banff Pork Seminar was about changes, challenges and opportunities.

“The Banff Pork Seminar is one that has intrigued me and started the process of thinking about things in a new light on our farm,” said Cronin. “The Banff Pork Seminar is one that offers progressive, outside-of-the-box thinking. It’s impossible to leave after three days without thinking about this in a slightly or radically different way.”

She spoke about various challenges and opportunities arising from increases in production and packing capacity, new technologies, trade deals, fake meat and the ongoing threat of disease.

“Our industry is coming together in collaborative ways to formulate prevention and action plans, working together locally, provincially, nationally and globally,” she said.

“This industry may be a challenging one, but it is certainly one we could be proud of.”

Before wrapping up the seminar for the year, Cronin introduced a woman whose own test of courage in extreme adversity sets up as a high standard for those who are facing challenges. On November 12, 2013, Mylène Paquette landed in Lorient, France after rowing a small boat across the North Atlantic Ocean. Her odyssey had begun 129 days and 5,000 kilometres earlier, off a pier in Halifax, Nova Scotia.

Paquette told her Banff audience that she made the voyage because she had felt she had not achieved anything in her life and wanted to prove something to herself. She had to overcome a crippling fear of water to dive into a cold ocean and scrape off the barnacles that were slowing her down. She struggled against a hurricane and, at one point, lost all of her gear because she had fallen asleep without shutting the hatch when her self-righting boat capsized. She visited with a blue whale and enjoyed the short-term companionship of a small fish that snacked on the biological waste she had thrown overboard.

Guided by a base crew who kept in contact via satellite phone, she battled disorientation, fatigue and the potentially fatal consequences of her own mistakes. On her arrival in Lorient, she grinned through her pain rather than letting go when the two flares handed to her started burning her hands and arms. She had failed to read the instructions before lighting them. “But you can’t let them go.”

In her address to the room, Paquette said she learned during her crossing that attitude is the only thing any person can really control. She said she spent some of her time during the crossing thinking about what it means to give up.

“I don’t control the winds, the waves, the pressure systems; I don’t control what happens even in my boat, because everything is moving around in the boat.

“So, what do I control? Instead of asking myself how many kilometres do I want to row today, I ask myself, how do I like to feel today? Do I want to fear something today or do I want to feel courageous? Do I want to feel sad today, or do I want to feel happy?”

She decided to work on feeling courageous and on maintaining her attitude despite those things that were out of her control.

Paquette’s odyssey – Between Land and Sea – and how her life has changed are described on her web site, www.mylenepaquette.com, published in both of Canada’s official languages.

Banff Pork Seminar returns to the Banff Springs on January 7-9, 2020. Proceedings, articles and other details are available on the web site, www.banffpork.ca •

— By Brenda Kossowan