Monthly Minute: Ground beef, diagnostic services, and Calf 911

The ABP Monthly Minute is your monthly re-cap of everything you need to know about what is happening at Alberta Beef Producers in 60 seconds or less. 

Updates from ABP

We’ve given our buddies help with processing cattle, or picked up parts for them because we were in town anyway, but how often do we take the time to ask how they’re really doing?

Last year, ABP worked with the Centre for Suicide Prevention (CSP) to add a character named Clay to their ever-growing list of personas.

Clay was developed with input from Alberta Beef Producers, the Do More Agriculture Foundation, and Canadian Mental Health Association Alberta’s Rural Mental Health Project, as part of CSP’s Buddy Up campaign.

Meet Clay

The Government Desk 

ABP is urgently requesting that Health Canada exempt ground beef from the proposed front-of-package (FOP) regulations. With record high food inflation, now is not the time to vilify a readily available and affordable, nutrient-dense source of protein.

Health Canada’s proposed FOP regulations would require ground beef, a single ingredient whole food, sold at retail to carry a “high in” saturated fat warning label. Unlike other single ingredient foods, such as meat, milk, eggs, vegetables, and fruit.

The Canadian government has extended the 2022 AgriStability enrolment deadline to June 30, 2022, giving farmers more time to sign up for the program. With the removal of the reference margin limit, producers are encouraged to review the program to see if AgriStability works on their operation.

AgriStability is one of the business risk management programs available under the Canadian Agricultural Partnership. The margin-based program is designed to help producers manage large income declines. More information is available on the AgriStability website.

The Production Desk

The ABP Research Committee met last month and Darren Bevans elected as Chair. The Agriculture Funding Consortium received 147 Letters of Intent, and of those, 54 were relevant to beef, forage or feed. Fifteen projects were selected to move forward to the full proposal stage, which are due at the end of July. Following peer review, a final funding decision will be made in December 2022.

ABP provided $8,000 of matching funds for a CAP application to examine the feasibility of expanding the UCVM Diagnostic Services Unit (DSU) to a full-service laboratory, on par with the services provided in other provinces. Serecon is leading that work, with the final report due at the end of June.

ABP Extension Highlights:

• We are partnering with BCRC on resources for veterinarians to share with their clients (e.g. Calf 911 videos);
• We are supporting the CowBytes transition to Saskatchewan Agriculture;
• Pasture 101 modules (development led by ABP) are being incorporated into the BCRC website and will be launched shortly after the refresh of the BCRC site.

Featured Posts

Events

The Monthly Minute provides a regular update of the goings-on at Alberta Beef Producers, from recent news and updates to the work of staff at ABP.

You can find more of these updates at our producer resource site — albertabeef.org. And sign up to receive digital communications and our print publication, ABP Magazine, by updating your contact information on ABP Daily.

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