The Rural Voice, 1990-12, Page 12treleaven's
Iucknow
feed mill limited
COMPLETE LINE
OF ANIMAL FEED AND
VETERINARY SUPPLIES
HOG — BROILER — LAYER
TURKEY — BEEF — DAIRY
VEAL — FISH — PET FOODS
call
LUCKNOW
519-528-3000
or
1-800-265-3006
8 THE RURAL VOICE
BST AND PST
NOT LSD
Adrian Vos, from Huron County, has
contributed to The Rural Voice since
its inception in 1975.
The protest against the use of
bovine somatotropin (BST) has been
dismissed by the Ontario appeals
tribunal, and rightly so. Whether the
hormone is increased in animals
through selective breeding, or through
injection or feeding, it makes no
difference to the health of the product.
No industry can dismiss potential
profits simply because of the phobias
of some health freaks who would
rather use LSD. We still have to wait
for research to prove whether the
animal's welfare is affected or not.
It's possible that the extra milk will
demand extra large udders. That
could be painful to cows.
One of the biggest problems in the
use of BST is its application. As one
dairy farmer pointed out to me, cows
will become very leery when he
approaches them daily with a syringe.
This problem won't be overcome until
either long-lasting injections are
developed or the substance can be
added to feed.
A similar problem could develop
with porcine somatotropin (PST), and
this cannot be ignored. Not only does
it make pork less expensive (fat is
energy which takes four times the
amount of feed to produce than lean),
it also provides consumers with what
they have demanded for a long time,
lean meat. One of the reasons why it
takes four pounds of feed to produce
one pound of pork as opposed to only
two pounds of feed to produce one
pound of chicken or turkey is that
poultry has only three per cent of fat
compared to more than 35 per cent on
a pig. Most pig fat is trimmed off and
rendered into soap and such.
I'm sure that when PST or any
similar product is ready for use, there
will be some hog men and health
freaks who will raise a hue and cry to
ban the stuff.
Despite this, I believe it will be
allowed. Preliminary tests have
shown that between 20 and 30 per cent
of feed can be saved in raising hogs.
Since 80 per cent of the cost of raising
hogs is for feed, it's clear that the total
cost of raising a hog can possibly be
reduced by as much as 20 per cent. If
PST use temporarily increases the cost
to some customers, the net overall
gain will still be too big to ignore. In
the long run, more customers will be
gained with the recovery of market
losses to chickens and turkeys in the
past. I'm convinced that some pork
producers will sell PST -free pork
when the time comes.
British experience has shown that
consumers were not willing to accept
the high cost associated with so-called
"pure" meat. "Organic" pork, which
sold well in its initial stages, has now
lost much of its appeal and few
farmers still produce it.
In Holland and Germany, there's
still a market for brown organic eggs,
which, for the present, is holding its
own. However, the extra cost would
not be acceptable in a recession,
except for a faithful few.
Keeps you ears open to reports
coming from the Geneva GATT talks.
Canada is the only one of 95 or so
members of the GATT family to
strongly defend supply management.
It doesn't help when our Minister of
Trade, John Crosbie, gives out the
wrong subsidy figures. He mistakenly
believes that the difference between
the Canadian price and the world
price is the amount of subsidies
farmers get.
Use your head John. A portion
of the world price is determined by
Third World countries whose peasants
work for pennies a day. Besides,
the $8.8 billion subsidy referred to
by Crosbie is much more than the
actual total income of Canadian
farmers.0