Grain industry officials were scrambling to do damage control last week after it was revealed that two boatloads of feed barley shipped to Japan last year were contaminated with deer excrement.
The shipments took place several months ago but became public only after the Canadian Farm Enterprise Network issued a press release about them.
The organization, an offshoot of Canadian Farmers for Justice, said the incident underscores the need for changes to Canada’s centralized grain marketing system.
“Under our system no one is held accountable and all farmers are going to pay for this through double cleaning and the weakening of our reputation” with customers, said Bernie Sambrook, a CFEN spokesperson from Medora, Man.
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A Canadian Wheat Board official criticized the organization for using the incident to score political points in its fight to end the wheat board’s export monopoly and said the negative publicity could hurt farmers more than the actual shipments.
“It’s extremely irresponsible of them,” said information officer Deanna Allen. “They’re taking it upon themselves to put shipments from the rest of the farmers in peril.”
She said other customers have already contacted the marketing agency to express concern over the contamination.
Knew about problem
But Sambrook makes no apologies for going public with information that he said has been in the organization’s hands for several weeks.
“Our quality system has been held up as the greatest quality system in the world,” he said. “Maybe our customers should be aware that it isn’t perfection over here.”
Len Seguin, chief of inspection for the Canadian Grain Commission, said the deer droppings probably came from barley harvested in the spring of 1997, and largely from the Peace River region.
But it’s too early to say who is responsible for allowing it to get into export cargoes.
“At this point it’s premature to identify any fault,” he said. “What needs to be done is to clean up this problem in order to protect markets for Canadian producers.”
A number of measures have been put in place to prevent it from happening again:
- Primary elevator managers have been given the authority to refuse grain with excrement.
- Primary elevator operators have been ordered not to ship contaminated grain to terminals or to transfer elevators at ports.
- The wheat board is refusing to buy grain containing feces.
- The grain commission will more closely monitor grain arriving at and being shipped out of export terminals.
But Seguin said he’s not confident the problem is under control.
He said the issue is essentially a “cleaning problem.” The sieves used to remove foreign material from grain shipments are evidently not able to get rid of the deer feces, which he said are about the size of a thumbnail, and work is under way to fix that.
Seguin confirmed there have been other complaints besides the two boatloads that went to Japan, but neither the commission nor the board would provide details.
All complaints involve barley bought for livestock feed. The level of contamination was low and the barley was safe for animal diets, Seguin said.
