INTRODUCTION
Shoulders hurt? Headache? Having trouble getting to sleep? You just may be a farmer. If those symptoms barely scratch the surface, you might be a hog producer on the Canadian Prairies.
A little stress is a good thing – it helps us grow, say professionals who have been growing concerned about the mental status of farmers and ranchers across the country.
Add negative profit margins, shutdowns at processing plants and much of the other fallout from COVID-19 and Prairie hog producers have ticked all the checkboxes for rapidly escalating from stress to distress.
OLYMEL RESUMES PRODUCTION AFTER
COVID OUTBREAK
The most visible stressor for producers shipping to Olymel has been the uncertainty and frustration involving an outbreak of COVID-19 among staff working in the Red Deer plant.
Richard Vigneault, who manages corporate communications for Olymel LP from the company’s head office in St. Hyacinthe, Quebec, said its Red Deer plant was shut down on February 17 to deal with the outbreak and reopened on March 4.
Sanitation measures already in effect were ramped up and additional staff were assigned to monitor those measures, Vigneault said in an email to Prairie Hog Country on March 24.
“Social distancing protocols have been further adjusted and enhanced, in particular through the addition of physical space. Health and safety meetings between management and union representatives are scheduled daily. The company relies on the co-operation of each employee to remain vigilant and adhere to all health measures in force at the plant, which include reporting symptoms, wearing a mask, complying with a two-metre distancing rule and hand washing.”
News reports during the closure stated that three and possibly four employees had died of the illness, while many others became seriously ill.
In his email, Vigneault said 1,450 people, representing just under 80 per cent of all staff, had been tested since January 1. He declined to provide more specific numbers. An Alberta Health Services spokesperson could not be reached before press time to give those details.
While the outbreak at the plant was devastating to the people who work there, the company implemented several strategies to ease the impact on producers and clear a path to reducing the backlog of hogs as much as possible, he said.
Company-owned pigs, representing about 60 per cent of the supply to Red Deer, were diverted to Olymel facilities in the United States to create as much capacity as possible for independent producers. Vigneault said it should take four to five weeks to clear the backlog and resume normal operations.
In addition, producers will not be penalized for delivering hogs that went over weight while being held back.
Darcy Fitzgerald, executive director for Alberta Pork, said Olymel has done the best they could to look after producer concerns arising from the shutdown.
Some producers have enough space within their operations to hold market hogs back for a short period of time, said Fitzgerald. Those producers adjusted the rations for their animals to slow down their rate of growth during the hold-back period, he said. Other producers were able to find alternative markets, which generated increased transportation costs as well as a potential loss in value, he said.
Producers will be eligible for government compensation cheques with the launch of an AgriRecovery program created last year in response to covid concerns.
In a news release issued on March 5, Alberta Agriculture Minister Devin Dreeshen joined Marie-Claude Bibeau, Minister of Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada in announcing that up to $3 million in disaster relief would be provided to Alberta producers affected by plant shutdowns related to COVID outbreaks at processing facilities. The program is cost shared between the two ministries, at 60 per cent from the federal government and 40 per cent from the province.
The AgriRecovery Framework created in May of 2020 has a total budget of up to $100 million to assist producers with extraordinary costs of managing livestock through the effects of covid-related plant closures.
In a formal statement included within the March 5 news release, Minister Dreeshen said the provincial government is committed to protecting lives and livelihoods.
“We want to make sure that hog producers are getting the supports that they need so that they can continue to do what they do best, which is producing safe, high-quality food, not just for Alberta families, but for families all around the world,” he said.
Minister Bibeau said up to $50 million in relief payments can be made available to hog producers through the AgriRecovery Framework.
“It has already been a rollercoaster year and the Olymel closure is yet another challenge for pork producers. Our government has the back of pork producers and will assist them with the extra costs to deal with the associated backlogs,” she said.
“We also care deeply about the health and safety of food production plant workers, who are doing essential work, and we have implemented a range of emergency safety and worker benefit programs to support their safety and wellbeing.”
Fitzgerald said the ability of industry, government and producers to work together in a time of crisis is proving its benefits.
“It says a lot for our industry that we’ve been able to help each other,” he said.
AHEM!
News of the shutdown at Olymel had not yet been made public on March 4, when Alberta Farm Animal care hosted an animal disease workshop online as part of its 2021 Livestock Care Conference.
Leading the discussion was Todd Bergen-Henengouwen, a researcher and consultant with Edmonton-based Serecon and part of the team at Animal Health Emergency Management. Supporting him were Mikki Shatosky, AHEM project operations manager and economist Bob Burden, senior director for Serecon and AHEM project manager. Workshop participants included veterinarians Darrell Dalton, registrar for the Alberta Veterinary Medical Association and Duane Landals, president of the Alberta Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals and a past director of the Canadian Animal Health Coalition.
Emergency planning usually involves detecting and managing an outbreak of disease within a herd. With the outbreak early last year of COVID-19, management issues involved the impact of a human pandemic on livestock herds and the potential for widespread disaster in a different order than what had been experienced before, Bergen-Henengouwen said in his presentation to the workshop.
Planning for livestock producers in the outbreak of massive shutdowns at processing plants meant raising questions about how to deal with a stream of slaughter animals that had no place to go. In a similar vein, planning has to consider the best ways to deal with large numbers of animals that may have to be destroyed to stop a disease from spreading.
Planners still look at lessons learned in the aftermath of a Food and Mouth Disease (FMD) outbreak 20 years ago in the United Kingdom. In a holocaust nearing apocalyptic magnitude, the outbreak hit 2,000 farms, caused destruction of 10 million animals and blew $9 billion out of the economy. A similar outbreak in Canada today would cost in excess of $50 billion, said Bergen-Henengouwen.
Independent of the economic losses, the outbreak had an enormous psychosocial effect on rural communities, especially among farmers and veterinarians, as reported in a variety of research articles that examined the impact. Additional impacts included tremendous losses in the tourism sector and pollution from the huge pyres set up to incinerate animal carcasses.
AHEM’s mandate is to look at lessons of the past and develop plans to prevent outbreaks in the first place, and then ensure that effective measures are in place in the event and aftermath of an occurrence.
“If we were to contract something like foot and mouth disease, it’s leading us to believe that the chances and size of it could be quite large. This is why we are focusing on animal disease emergencies,” said Bergen-Henengouwen.
Landals said the horror in UK was intensified through lack of respect for the incident command system and elbowing between organizations competing for the role.
Workshop participants were put through a simulated exercise, in which several sows start showing lameness on a small farm near Lacombe. Further observations the next day find drooling and grinding of teeth, and two beef cows are noticeably lame. A vet called to examine the animals is unfamiliar with FMD. She asks a vet from the Canadian Food Inspection Agency to have a look.
While a diagnosis is not confirmed, a number of actions fall into place at this point, including isolation of the affected animals and declaration of the farm as infected premises while samples are collected for analysis at CFIA’s diagnostic lab in Winnipeg.
There’s a challenge. In the period of time between the first signs of an outbreak and confirmation of FMD, 18 weaners and two sows has been shipped and beef calves were also sent to market.
So, some questions will revolve around a communication plan to ensure that neighbouring farms as well as the processing plant and auction market are protected without creating a panic in the absence of a confirmed outbreak.
Those procedures are managed by the CFIA and described in the AHEM handbook for farmers, available from the website noted at the end of this article. Within its pages, the handbook describes the duties and responsibilities of everyone involved in preventing an outbreak and, if one should occur, the appropriate measures to take and how to prepare for the days and weeks to come.
Back at the hypothetical farm in Lacombe, sick animals are isolated, no animals can leave or enter the farm – including the horse because it could become a carrier, and biosecurity measures are reviewed. There is a full trace of vehicle movements and livestock associations are notified of a suspected vesicular disease with some concern that it could be a serious event.
The challenge overall, said Bergen-Henengouwen, is to get the message about disease prevention and response out to everyone who could be involved and to ensure compliance, including among small producers identified by AFAC Executive Director Annemarie Pederson as particularly vulnerable because they are not as well connected to programs as their counterpart on bigger farms.
“AFAC has a backyard chicken workshop; we’re working on a new program for beekeepers. We’re definitely trying to bridge that gap,” said Pederson.
Resources are available; it’s a matter of ensuring that they are communicated to all farms, said Bergen-Henengouwen. However, compliance remains a huge concern, he said.
Bergen-Henengouwen recalled the story told by an Irish woman whose farm was among those affected by the 2001 outbreak.
“It’s an ugly situation. Her husband, when all of the animals were gone, the thing she remembers is the silence. Regardless of what you do, it’s a hideous thing, so that’s what we are trying to do, is prevent it from coming in the first place.”
FIXING BROKEN FARMERS
Disease, biosecurity, financial stress, heavy workloads, succession issues and the need to put up a strong front are taking a huge toll on farmers in all commodities.
Martine Fraser, a farmer wellness worker based in Quebec, said during a later AFAC workshop focused on mental health that she has seen the impact firsthand, both as a professional and as a member of two dairy families.
“Research has shown that more than 50 per cent of our farmers are suffering from high psychological distress compared with 20 per cent in the general population,” said Fraser.
“A large percentage have alcohol problems, 30 per cent have sleeping problems and more than five per cent seriously talk about suicide.
“There is a major issue of the perception regarding the management of psychological help – many feel that it won’t change anything. That’s a thing that we see very often, the perception of people that they don’t need . . . any services at all.”
Plant closures have ratcheted up the stress with slaughter houses closed for several days at a time and milk being poured down the drain.
In addition, there is a widening cleavage between farmers and everyone else because it is no longer common for everyone to have at least one farmer in the family, she said. That creates fear of public opinion among farmers whose multiple roles include guardianship of the land and suppliers of food.
Fraser’s employer, Au cœur des familles agricoles (ACFA), was established in 2003 to ensure that farmers and their families receive the support they need, and that they get that support from people who are part of their community and familiar with its nuances.
“This way of working creates a bond of trust and allows us to be credible in our role of intervention – we try to help as much as possible by adapting our intervention to their reality,” said Fraser.
ACFA workers are farmers themselves and are therefore able to work alongside the farmers they help, she said.
Other social workers and psychologists discussing farmer wellness have confirmed her position that help for mental health and stress issues must come from within the community and not from outsiders who are more familiar with a more urban lifestyle.
“Most of the producers who ask me for help experience difficulty connecting with professionals. (ACFA’s) way of working creates a bond of trust and allows us to be credible in our role. We try to help as much as possible by adapting our intervention to their reality.”
She recounted a visit to one farm, where she arrived while a cow was having difficulty calving. She and the farmer discussed his issues while he helped the cow, create a much more effective interaction without taking him away from his work.
“The agriculture world is very united. We care for each other and we look out for each other,” said Fraser.
Workshop facilitator Mona Cooley, a Manitoba farm kid and founder and CEO of Calgary-based Cool Family Solutions, supported Fraser’s comments about the stigma farmers face in seeking help when they experience stress, anxiety or any other mental health issue.
The word stigma originated in Ancient Greece with the branding of slaves and criminals. That word has persisted into modern English as a mark against people who experience stress and mental health disorders.
Farmers love to help farmers, but that familiar stigma gets in the way when they are in the throws of an anxiety attack or hitting the bottle to escape the stresses they face.
The risk factors are especially high in agriculture because high achievers often do not admit that they are struggling, said Cooley.
Day-to-day stresses are normal, but the risk of burnout can bring serious consequences, she said.
Physical symptoms of burnout include low energy and muscle tension along with feelings of sadness, inadequacy, frustration and irritation. Intervention is needed if those symptoms persist for two weeks or longer, she said.
“Sleeping less because you’re calving doesn’t mean depression. We know there is the season and understand that. But deviation, long term, from someone’s normal can be a sign that someone needs help.”
Various resources are available in Alberta for farmers to seek help for themselves or for someone in their circle.
Good places to start include the Do More Agriculture Foundation, which offers the Talk Ask Listen workshop presented by AFAC and has a listing of crisis centres and mental health professionals, including Cooley on its website, domore.ag
Producers and their families can also refer to mental health resources listed at or by calling the AgSafe Alberta hotline, 1-833-924-7233.
AHEM workbooks and other resources can be found online at or by calling Mikki Shatosky, Project Operations Manager at 403-870-8784 or Bob Burden, Project Manager at 780-994-7440. •
— By Brenda Kossowan
