(Inspection.gc.ca)

Agropur pulls milk over sanitizer residue concerns

Reading Time: 2 minutes A case of “discomfort” reported by one consumer has led North America’s biggest dairy co-operative to pull certain batches of milk from sale in Quebec and Ontario. Agropur on Friday announced a voluntary recall of certain bagged and cartoned milks made at its Ottawa processing plant and sold under the Sealtest and L’ecole c’est nourrissant […] Read more

A macrophage (immune response) cell in early stages of infection with African swine fever virus, magnified about 1,000x. (Keith Weller photo courtesy ARS/USDA)

VIDO-InterVac joins swine fever fight

Reading Time: 2 minutes The University of Saskatchewan’s vaccine research and development arm is set to become Canada’s first non-government agency to work with the African swine fever virus. Saskatoon-based Vaccine and Infectious Disease Organization-International Vaccine Centre (VIDO-InterVac) will start work with the virus this month at its Containment Level 3-Agriculture (CL3-Ag) facility, the Canadian Food Inspection Agency said […] Read more


(Photo courtesy Canada Beef Inc.)

New livestock transport rules include grace period for all sectors

Reading Time: 2 minutes Enforcement of new federal rules for livestock transport, due to take effect Feb. 20, will focus on handler education and awareness for the first two years — and across all affected livestock species, not just cattle. The now-amended Humane Transportation of Animals regulations are meant to focus on the time frames during which animals are […] Read more

(Photo courtesy Canada Beef Inc.)

Cattle producers get longer phase-in on new transport regs

Reading Time: 2 minutes New federal livestock transport regulations, due to come into force in February, will now roll out on a longer timeline for the beef and dairy cattle sectors. Federal Agriculture Minister Marie-Claude Bibeau has announced a “two-year transition period” for bovines, which is meant to provide “time to gather more data on effective solutions concerning the […] Read more


A colourized low-temperature electron micrograph of a cluster of E. coli bacteria. Individual bacteria in this photo are oblong and colored brown. (Eric Erbe photo and colourization by Christopher Pooley courtesy ARS/USDA)

Ryding-Regency’s federal beef packing licenses cancelled

Reading Time: 3 minutes Citing “false or misleading information” given them during an E. coli probe, food safety officials have now permanently pulled the federal slaughter, processing and export licenses for Toronto’s Ryding-Regency Meat Packers and related companies. The cancellation, announced Monday, indefinitely prolongs what was already described as “critical processing capacity shortage” for the province’s cattle producers, leaving […] Read more



Beef sirloin tips are among the many Ryding-Regency-produced beef products now recalled. (Panainte Ancuta-Georgiana/iStock/Getty Images)

New meat recall prolongs Ryding-Regency shutdown

Reading Time: < 1 minute Ryding-Regency Meat Packers remains shut down, making an already tight processing capacity situation event more challenging for Ontario farmers. The Toronto company, along with St. Ann’s Food, announced a recall Tuesday of a long list of its products because of concerns with E. coli O157:H7. More products were added to the recall on Thursday. The […] Read more

Tuberculosis bacteria under an electron microscope. (Janice Haney Carr photo courtesy Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (U.S.))

Last of trace-out quarantines lifted in bovine TB probe

Reading Time: 2 minutes The last of 38 cattle herds to be checked for bovine tuberculosis in a federal trace-out investigation across three provinces has been released from movement controls. The Canadian Food Inspection Agency on Monday reported that a central Saskatchewan herd has now been released from controls which were imposed in December last year. CFIA said in […] Read more


File photo of fresh cherries from a roadside fruit stand at Penticton, B.C. (Amy Mitchell/iStock/Getty Images)

EU set to halt imports of Canadian cherries, other fruits

Reading Time: < 1 minute Ottawa | Reuters — The European Union will halt imports of Canadian cherries and other fresh fruits starting Sept. 1 as it enforces new import requirements related to pests, according to a Canadian government document sent to industry on Thursday. In the notice, which was seen by Reuters, the Canadian Food Inspection Agency said the […] Read more

File photo of a Suffolk ewe infected with scrapie. (Jack Dykinga photo courtesy ARS/USDA)

Two Alberta sheep flocks quarantined for scrapie

Reading Time: 2 minutes Two flocks of sheep in Alberta are under federal quarantine after a sheep that lived at both farms was confirmed June 21 with classical scrapie. A degenerative nervous system disease affecting sheep and goats, scrapie is one of the transmissible spongiform encephalopathy (TSE) family that includes Creutzfelt-Jakob disease in people, BSE in cattle and chronic […] Read more