Imagination and money are the only limits when setting up an emergency plan for your farm, says a large-animal rescue specialist from Macon County, Georgia.
Rebecca Gimenez-Husted, founder of Technical Large Animal Emergency Response, made a return visit to Alberta Farm Animal Care’s annual conference on March 11, bringing her message about setting up an on-farm emergency response plan. Gimenez-Husted tailored her presentation to discussing implications of the COVID-19 pandemic, especially given that the Canada-United States border had closed the day before she planned to come to Canada.
The conference and related workshops are typically held at the Pomeroy Inn, located on the Olds College Campus. In a last-minute twist, however, organizers switched to an online version for the safety of attendees and in response to measures the province had taken to check the spread of COVID-19.
In what has now become standard protocol for meetings and conferences, participants were given a passcode so they could take part via computers or phones while speakers gave their presentations from the comfort of their own homes.
Gimenez-Husted salted her presentation with a bit of humour, placing a Corona beer case on the shelf behind her.
“I really don’t like Corona but thought it would be funny to have it here,” she said shortly after addressing the need to include euthanasia and disposal plans as part of an emergency response.
Good planning looks at everything that can happen on your farm, from financial crisis to fire, flood or contagion, said Gimenez-Husted.
She pointed out that all of society is affected when there is a disaster on the farms:
• The safety of the human food supply depends on the health and care of food-producing animals
• Owners have personal and financial investments in their animals and facilities
• Farm workers and owners may be injured or killed attempting to care for their animals in disasters
• Agriculture, livestock, poultry and horses are a vital source of revenue and a huge portion of the economy.
The worst time for making plans is when something awful has already happened, said Gimenez-Husted. A little better than that is planning in advance of an impending disaster, like changing routes when you hear about a traffic jam. She pointed to the biosecurity protocols on swine and poultry farms as an example of the best-case scenario, with active plans in place to avoid crisis in the first place, and then spell out the response in the event of an emergency.
Disaster response planning begins with two situations to consider: Evacuation or shelter in place.
Running your farm during a pandemic falls into the second category, requiring farmers to shield their people and animals from the effects of the disease itself as well as ensuring that the operation remains viable when supply chains are slowed or broken.
Will your staff be able to come to work? Who will look after the animals if there are only four people in the operation and two of them are sick? Where will you find feed and how will you ship animals for slaughter? What if you can’t move your pigs?
Looking after people is always the first priority, said Gimenez-Husted.
“You’re going to see people concerned about family members. Those with school-age children, it will be hard to find someone else to take care of them, especially if you’re supposed to shelter in place and not have other people coming to your property.”
Veterinary associations are reporting that some pharmaceuticals are already in short supply and there is further concern about the available of medical equipment.
Gimenez-Husted said the Government of Canada has taken these issues very seriously and provides detailed information on the Canadian Food Inspection Agency website. Search “animal health” at inspection.gc.ca for details, including a COVID-19 response alert. The Guidance Response Depository within those pages will contain responses broken down by animal types.
In wrapping up her session, Gimenez-Husted commented on the importance of looking after your mental health during and after a crisis. She said the casualties of a foot and mouth outbreak in the United Kingdom in 2001 included 69 farmers who committed suicide.
“We’ve got to reach out to the people in our community. Some people are very stressed.”
Gimenez-Husted anticipates that leaders will later dissect the COVID-19 pandemic responses in an effort to learn where things went wrong and what actions worked. The FMD crisis in the UK has been a benchmark in disaster response for the past 20 years. COVID-19 will become a new example, she said.
“We want to say this is a worst-case scenario. I’m not saying we lock everything down but we may have to look at things that the poultry and swine industry do.”
Please visit the Prairie Hog Country website, www.prairiehogcountry.com for detailed information about disaster planning, shared courtesy of Gimenez-Husted and TLAER.
Education Flows Both Ways
Dairy operator and university Professor Marina “Nina” von Keyserlingk, Natural Sciences and Engineering Research chair in Land and Food Systems at the University of Alberta, shared some research that explores the value of educating consumers about operation of livestock farms.
There have been some questions about whether farming operations should be made more transparent and discussion of a law in Ontario that would ban people from taking pictures and videos without consent.
“I can’t tell you how often I hear from people working to promote agriculture: ‘We’ve just got to education, and then they’ll understand.’ We decided to test this,” von Keyserlingk said in her presentation.
She described a group of people was exposed to animal care practices inside a dairy barn. The test subjects were tested on their perceptions of dairy farming, and then toured through the operation, stopping at eight different stations.
At the end of their “lessons,” they were tested again. On average, they were able to correctly answer more of the questions about actual farming practices. In some cases, their perceptions improved.

But there were also areas where their perceptions worsened, said von Keyserlingk. Some of the subjects who had not expressed concerns before the tour showed more concern afterward, she said.
“They were displeased with calf separation and the lack of pasture and outdoor access. The reality was so far from their vision; you could see that they were getting a bit wiggly.”
Those results indicate that, in 2020, where people in the developed world have many choices, the livestock industry needs to look at things a bit differently.
von Keyserlingk then offered some insight into the role scientists play in modelling public trust.
She gave an example where a research from Wagenen University in the Netherlands put a picture of a dairy cow using a rotating brush on the front page of an article submitted to the Royal Society journal, Biology of Letters.
The article was selected as the cover for that issue of the journal, and reporters who saw advance copies were calling for details a week before it was released. A Wagenen professor who had seen the article chastised Dutch farmers for not having the brushes in their barns and received, in response, pictures of the brushes in dairy farms across the country.
This is a “good news” story, showing that scientists can play a role in gaining public trust by offering insight about animal care, said von Keyserlingk.
She encourages farms to do tours if they are able, and then to ask the people who visit their operations about any aspects of the tour that made them feel uncomfortable and encourage them to call back if they have questions later on.
Conversations with consumers need to focus on the way things are now, when perceptions may be based on practices that were common 25 or more years ago.
People working in the livestock industry and concerned about public trust need to consider what their values are and be open about where they see their sector going in the next 25 years, said von Keyserlingk.
She left the conference with four take-home messages:
· Closing the barn door erodes trust
· One-way education is likely to fail
· Sustained two-way education can help
· Don’t just respond to concerns. Lead the process. Develop collective vision and a plan to move ahead.
AFAC’s 2020 Livestock Care Conference drew an online audience of just over 80 people. While the online format was put together in a hurry, it suffered only a few minor glitches and set the stage for similar conference models in the future, when it is not practical or possible to bring people together.
In bringing greetings from the province, Assistant Deputy Minister John Conrad from Alberta Agriculture and Forestry said Alberta faces both challenges and opportunities in the months ahead.
Recently moved over from Alberta Environment, Conrad said he joined at a challenging time in terms of the provincial budget, and that it is wrapped in the gossamer of new pandemic.
“It’s an exciting time, festooned with opportunities for us to shape the future of agriculture in Western Canada and here in Alberta. My commitment to AFAC today is to ensure channels of communications are wide open. The quid pro quo is: I will need to lean on you for advice and for a sharing of responsibilities. The Alberta government will be leaning more on partners – sharing and leveraging opportunities that other groups and organizations bring to the table.”
Learn more about LCC 2020 and AFAC online at www.afac.ab.ca
For livestock-related emergencies, call AFAC’s 24-hour ALERT line, 1-800-506-2273 or by clicking the link on the right side of their web page. •
— By Brenda Kossowan