A year shy of its 50th anniversary, Banff Pork Seminar hosted 755 delegates for two days of learning, sharing and networking at the jewel of the Rocky Mountains, the Fairmont Banff Springs.
Organizing committee Chair Amy Cronin opened the two-day seminar on the morning of January 8, remarking on the buzz she felt in the room when she arrived from her farm in Ontario.
“This isn’t just the place to come and to learn and to educate ourselves. It’s a place to come and meet up with friends that we haven’t had a chance to see in a while. It’s also a pretty exquisite location, wouldn’t you say?”
The seminar opened with Keynote addresses by Joe Schwarcz from McGill University and Tiffany Lee from the North American Meat Institute. Delegates then attended breakout sessions of their choice for the rest of the day. Day 2 opened with presentation of annual awards, followed by a plenary session featuring Brett Stuart from Global Agritrends and German veterinarian Klaus Depner of the Friedrich Loeffler Institute. Breakout sessions were repeated, with delegates returning for a boar pit, feature a discussion on feral pigs by Saskatchewan researcher Ryan Brook.
Prairie Hog Country attended as many sessions as possible to provide the following overview.

Sense and Nonsense Beyond Meat:
Joe Schwarcz and Tiffany Lee
These two speakers took a critical look at the morass of facts and myths surrounding food production and consumption in North America.
Schwarcz offered his insight into a “tsunami of quackery” in providing insight into separating sense from nonsense.
He described a variety of medical miracles that are based in faulty correlations and testimony from people who do not have training or expertise in biological sciences.
“So, what about the alkali diets that are being pushed today? Foods can be said to be alkaline or basic, depending after combustion on the residue that is left. That has nothing to do with nutrition. You’re not going to change the pH of your body. There’s nothing wrong, though, with the foods that they claim make the body alkaline. So, it’s not a dastardly diet, but it is being pushed by all kinds of people, and they give you this sort of presumptive science,” said Schwarcz.
“Who are these scientific icons who tell us that we should be eating an alkaline diet? Well, people like Tom Brady. I won’t disagree that he is probably one of the best quarterbacks that ever played the game, but when he starts writing a book about nutrition, we have to take that with a fairly large grain of salt.”
Schwarcz went on to point out that bacon and hotdogs have been pilloried for containing nitrogen compounds classified by the International Agency for Research on Cancer as Group 1 carcinogens.
“That of course is a frightening appellation, because a Group 1 carcinogen is something that is known to cause cancer in humans. This is the reason that many producers now are shying away from using nitrates and nitrite additives (which improve flavor). You have all kinds of products these days that have no nitrites, no nitrates added. Well, they don’t need to add nitrates and nitrites, because celery juice is replete with this stuff.”
He said the important factor to consider is that the IARC classifications define hazard, not risk. Therefore, the risk from consuming Group 1 carcinogens is directly related to the level of exposure.
“Only the dose makes the difference,” he said.
“We have to look at the overall diet, not at individual chemicals.”
The movement now to produce non-meat proteins will push producers of real meat to work better, including control of environmental problems. He said there is also a push for an all-carnivorous diet, raising a round of laughter with a slide marketing “Beyond Salad.”
Health Canada’s new “healthy plate” rules nothing out, but recommends moderation in everything, said Schwarcz. He went on to point out that good nutrition must be coupled with exercise and that radical claims of miracle diets should always be taken with a grain of salt.

Lee provided further depth to the discussion of alternative proteins and the North American Meat Institute’s quest for clear and accurate labelling.
She said there are two types of alternative proteins on the market: Those that are plant based and those that are grown from tissue cultured in the lab.
Plant-based meat mimics have been around for many years, including burgers made from mushrooms, said Lee. Cultured products are grown in the lab from a few cells of animal tissue. There is still a question of cost around the culture products, said Lee. It cost $13,000 to make the first cultured-meat burger, she said.
The United States Food and Drug Administration did not take a hard line on labelling when milk alternatives began to show up, so there the definition of what can be called milk is now quite broad and includes a range of plant-based beverages.
“The biggest problem with the labelling and branding of these products is FDA doesn’t go out an actually enforce labelling regulations,” said Lee.
She pointed to a package of bacon-habanero potato chips in which it turned out that what looked like bacon was actually bits of a product meant to look and taste like bacon. Small print on the bag stated that the chips were all vegan.
“There’s no bacon in that. But look at the label, right? This is sitting on the shelves today.”
NAMI members feel that products sold as bacon, burgers and other meats should be made from real meat and that imitations should be marketed as such, said Lee.
Some of the cattle-producing states, including Missouri, South Dakota, Arkansas, Kansas and Oklahoma, have made it law that products must be made from real meat to be called meat. “However, I don’t think that’s going to hold up.”
Lee explained that US Department of Agriculture laws preempt all state laws.
“So, we think that these state laws aren’t going to have much of an impact, but they sure do make for some good media stories. Our position is . . . we want a level playing field,” said Lee.
Meat producers want those making alternative products held to the same health and safety standards and they want labelling that clearly states what’s in the package.
She pointed also to claims that animal agriculture is a poor use of land and harmful to the environment.
“When we talk about land use, is it really a bad thing to have animals on land? I don’t think it is. I really think we need to take a lot closer look at some of these life-cycle assessments . . . when we want to say: ‘This product is better than this one.’”

Issues in Farm Security
Andy Curliss from North Carolina Pork Council and Geraldine Auston from Ag & Food Exchange offered their insight into security threats facing livestock operations, including aggressive lawsuits and invading protesters.
“What we want is trust from the public and the ability to operate,” said Curliss.
What some farmers have been getting, however, is a heavily financed and well-coordinated legal assault from people who claim that they are suffering harm from neighbouring hog farms.
He described a situation in which a farmer named Joey Carter sold a few parcels of land for residential development. In 2011, one of the neighbours sued Carter, stating that the farm was a nuisance to him and his new wife, including odours and truck traffic. The suit was successful, despite testimony from other neighbours who took no issue with the farm. The Carters had actually carried loans to finance many of the people who purchased land within their development and still receive monthly payments from them.
Lawyers representing the plaintiffs conducted the trial on what is termed the “reptile basis,” where they reach into the reptile part of the jurors’ brains and “scare the pants off them,” said Curliss.
“They turned a very normal hog farm into (the equivalent of) a nuclear radioactive waste dump,” he said.
“Their eyes are as wide as saucers, the jurors, and they can’t wait to protect the community from this radioactive waste dump.”

The jury awarded $75 million to the plaintiff, based in part on misleading testimony from committed activists who had kept a diary of odours from the hog farm and showing slight increases in blood pressure related to those odours.
An appeal is underway, but to date the only action has been an attempt to put Carter under a gag order, said Curliss. Meanwhile, however, there are no hogs on his farm.
“We have a good hog farm in North Carolina that stands empty as a result of what they have done,” he said.
Curliss played a video taken at the Carter farm after the judgment was handed down.
“There’s nobody safe right now,” Carter says as the camera rolls.
Curliss warned his audience about the tactics used by lawyers who are part of a movement to destroy animal agriculture.
“This is not a lawyer in North Carolina who is trying to resolve a genuine dispute among neighbours,” he said.
Rather, these lawyers are part of a well-financed network of wealthy philanthropists whose interests include groups such as Mercy for Animals.
He encouraged the swine industry to do a better job of working with key players including lawyers, academics, regulators, politicians, community activists, non-government organizations and media.
Auston focused on the preventative measures and action plans to protect farms from active protests and incursion.
Farm security should be practical and does not need to cost a lot, starting with good signage, properly locked doors and gates, effective lighting and security cameras, she said.
She reminded the audience of the SCAN principle, in which all people within the operation are trained to see what’s happening around them, contact anyone who has stopped near the property, ask questions about why they are there and notify the proper authorities, such as the industry association, of their observations.
“You also might want to be a good neighbour and tell people within your region that there has been some suspicious activity so that other people will look out.”
A properly designed security system should make potential intruders think about going somewhere else, said Auston.
Without proper signs, including biosecurity and trespassing warnings, the entry to every property offers unwritten permission for people to come in.
While physical structures are important, Auston also advised farmers to meet with local police and discuss issues that may arise, such as protesters attempting barge into the property and buildings.
“You want to know how the police might respond, what they might recommend,” she said.
All people involved in the operation should be trained in methods for dealing effectively with intruders without putting themselves at risk, she said.
For example, a farm worker could offer help to someone who appears out of place and guide that person to a coffee room or show them the way out.
She reminded the audience that Canadians have a right to peaceful assembly on public property and to always assume that your words and actions are being recorded.
“Use your own phone and do the same,” said Auston.
If protesters attempt to enter the property, they should be warned that police will be called. Staff should never engage in conversation with protesters and they should never, under any circumstances, allow them to take any animals away.
Police must be called immediately if trespassers come onto the property. The caller should provide good detail, including advice that people and animals are being threatened. Police need to know what sort of situation they are attending and how many units they will need to send.

Helpful details should include the number of people involved, descriptions of vehicles and license plate numbers, contents of any signs they are carrying and what they are saying.
Auston warned against threatening police if they don’t seem to come fast enough once a call has been made to 9-1-1. Repeated calls and threats will certainly get the police there more quickly – to arrest the caller, she said. When police do arrive, be patient.
“Law enforcement will try to negotiate a peaceful conclusion. They will try to de-escalate the situation. It can take six hours or more.”
Farm operators should never attempt to negotiate with protesters or trespassers. Once police arrive at the scene, they should be encouraged to lay charges.

Vaccine Theories and Realities
The case for “it depends” has never been more critical than the discussion of when and how to use vaccines. Banff Pork Seminar invited three veterinarians to talk about vaccines as a tool for building immune response and preventing disease.
As of mid-January, researchers had not yet developed a vaccine against African Swine Fever, which speaker Klaus Depner said has spread largely through human factors such as careless discarding of meat from infected animals.
“The major driver of the disease is humans – not the wild boar. Humans are the main cause of long-distance spreading, and if the virus comes to Canada, it is not because a wild boar swims from Europe to Canada. It is because somebody has some contaminated stuff in his luggage,” said Depner.
ASF is particularly troublesome because it is not highly contagious, incubates slowly and survives for a long time in harsh conditions including curing and decomposition. These factors allow the virus to exist on a farm for a considerable period of time before the infected pigs start to fall ill and die. Infected animals can shed virus long before its presence is detected and contaminated feed will infect some, but not all the animals that eat it.
Death occurs very quickly after clinical signs of the disease appear, said Depner. A sow that appears healthy in the evening can be found dead in her stall the next morning, he said.
Finding ASF in a barn can therefore be quite difficult – like finding a black cat against a black cat. Depner recommends against random testing because that can lead to false conclusions. Instead, he believes all dead pigs, including those that were running wild, should be tested for the virus. In Germany, even pigs that are killed in car strikes are tested, he said.
“If you detect early, you may have a chance to do something.”
Good biosecurity is the best form of protection because it will be years before a vaccine is available, therefore that is where the bulk of the effort should be spent in managing ASF, said Depner.
Once a vaccine becomes available, it will not likely be useful in a country or region where the disease has not been found, because vaccinated animals will test positive for the disease regardless of whether they are shedding the virus. There is no test that can differentiate between infected animals and animals that have developed immunity through vaccination, he said.
Veterinarians in Europe now advise producers to store their feed for a few months and to use straw and hay from the previous season so that any lingering virus will have time to die before coming into contact with the stock. “Use common sense; you will solve this problem,” said Depner.
Volker Gerdts from VIDO-InterVac in Saskatchewan provided discussion on how vaccines work while Jessica Law from Prairie Swine Health Services in Red Deer advised producers on the proper storage and use of vaccines.

The goal of vaccine-induced immunity is it to protect the animal from disease for as long as possible, said Gerdts. Each of the five types of vaccines, comes with its own characteristics for risk and immune response, and some can cause the shed of pathogens into the environment, he said.
Labs in the United Kingdom, Spain and China are all working on creating a live vaccine for ASF, which would not be appropriate in Canada because the disease has not yet arrived.
“You continue to see shedding. We don’t want shedding in Canadian pigs,” said Gerdts. Once available, the vaccines would be appropriate to use around an outbreak to reduce the risk of further spreading, he said.
Law addressed the reasons for vaccination and the proper handling of equipment and doses. Successful use of vaccines can have a major impact on animal health, she said. The veterinarian and producer must look at the unique features at each site and select a protocol that will provide the best protection for the animals.
Vaccines are “incredible fragile.” They need to be store at the correct temperature and disinfectants in the syringe can render them useless, said Law. She recommends keeping thermometers inside the fridge to monitor for temperature changes and rinsing syringes with distilled water to avoid introduction of pathogens.
“Do not use tap water. You can re-infect your syringe.”
Law recommends against mixing vaccines, which can also keep them from working properly and advises that farm operators set clear protocols for storing and administering vaccines.

“A Shit Show of Pigs”
University of Saskatchewan professor Ryan Brook did not mince words when he described the impact of pigs running wild across the Prairie Provinces.
Brook wrapped up the 2020 Banff Pork Seminar with some strong words about the effects of an agricultural diversity program that, quite literally, went hog wild – to the detriment of the environment, farms and wildlife in the regions where the animals have become established.
Sounders of feral pigs – the term for a matriarch and litters of her pigs at various ages – eat everything they can find, kill wildlife, destroy riparian areas and hide in the middle of crops, where they can cause immense damage before being discovered. They’re nocturnal and wily and never make the same mistake twice, so traditional hunting just scares them into hiding and can force them to spread out, says Brook.

Because they have so much space available, sounders of wild pigs can run in a territory of roughly 300 square kilometres, he said. Males travel on their own, running from sounder to sounder and breeding when the opportunity arises.
When European wild boars were first introduced to Canada, it was always assumed that escapees would not pose any threat because of the harsh winters on the prairies.
“Nobody thought about the fact that they came from Siberia,” he said.
“They are very well adapted to survive the coldest winters.”
Over time, that stock mixed with other breeds that had escaped or been turned loose, including domestic hogs and pot belly pigs. The mixed genetics is evident in the colours and coat patterns seen within some of the sounders, said Brook, who lays claim to being the only scientist in Canada who is actively engaged in studying pigs that survive outside of the fence.
He showed a slide depicting a group of wild pigs descended from some domestic animals that had escaped or been let go, surviving for years before mixing with a sounder of European wild boars.
“The technical term for this is ‘A shit show of pigs.’ This is a mess. I’ve showed this slide 100 times and nobody has asked me, ‘Where are these animals – we need to get rid of them.’ They get quite large, too.”
Brook said mature pigs can run upwards of 600 pounds. He saw one male that he estimated at 800 pounds, but could not get landowner permission to trap and examine it.
The issue now facing farmers and wildlife across the Prairie provinces is that the pigs have been left uncontrolled for too long, so any efforts at this point are not having a significant impact.
“You can’t barbecue your way out of a wild pig problem,” said Brook.
“Alberta is the only province that has a strategy to deal with wild pigs.”
However, estimates for the Alberta in the last year indicate that the populations remain strong, despite the work being done to get them under control.
“We’re moving into the land of too little, too late,” said Brook.
The actual numbers of pigs were badly underestimated until 2010, when Brook and his crew were given some funding to go out and look for them.
The bulk of his program is funded by a grant from the USDA, which already has its own wild pig problems and wants to stop wild pigs from Canada from crossing the border.
Brook said Canada, including the Canadian Food Inspection Agency, needs to find some leaders who are willing to put more effort into managing wild pigs, especially considering the threat posed if AFS finds its way to North America.
It’s essential that the entire sounder be trapped and disposed of for any strategy to work, said Brook. Ground trapping in baited pens and netting sounders at baited sites from a helicopter are the two methods being used here.
Finding wild pigs can be tricky, said Brook. He and his teams have become masters of the ‘Judas Pig’ technique, in which one female from a captured sounder is fitted with a radio collar and released. That animal will waste very little time in finding some new mates to run with, thus leading them all to capture, he said.
Predation exists only in those areas where there are significant packs of wolves that are capable of taking a pig down, said Brook.

Canada needs comprehensive, effective controls to manage wild pigs before they develop into an “ecological train wreck,” he said.
He encourages producers to learn more about wild pigs and to report sightings to appropriate local authorities, such as agricultural field operators.
In Alberta, wild pig sightings should be reported to the AgInfo Centre at 310-FARM (3276) or online to agriculture.alberta.ca/wildboar

Until Next Year…
U of A professor Ruurd Zijlstra, who shares program director duties with fellow professor Michael Dyck, closed the 2020 conference by remarking on the level of optimism that exists within the industry. He thanked the advisory committee and requested feedback from attendees to help guide plans for next year. He also thanked the 66 sponsors whose collective support amounted to $190,000. That funding was applied to the reducing admission fees to a value of $250 per delegate.

The 50th Banff Pork conference returns to the Fairmont Banff Springs on Jan. 5-7, 2021.
Zijlstra closed by wishing everyone a safe journey home. •
— By Brenda Kossowan