10 Producers waiting
on FIRB review Report promised this month
by DAVID SCHMIDT VANCOUVER – The BC Dairy
Association is anxious to see the BC Farm Industry Review Board’s Quota Transfer Assessment Review (QTAR) report, BCDA president Dave Taylor told members at their annual meeting in Vancouver, December 8.
Although FIRB had
promised to release its report by the end of December, it has now been delayed to January 15. “I can’t emphasize enough
how much we need the report,” Taylor said, adding he hopes it will “make industry strong.”
The BCDA will continue to fund fluid milk promotions (BC fluid milk sales were up 2% in BC but declined in all other provinces in 2017) but promised to look at its funding for industrial milk promotion after one producer questioned whether producer dollars should be used to promote Class 7 products which lower the blend price.
Manure spreading Both Taylor and BCDA chief
executive officer Paul Hargreaves said waste management is a top priority issue. Hargreaves noted the government’s policy intentions paper for the new agricultural waste control regulation proposes an outright ban on nutrient applications (manure spreading) from October 1 through March 31. “We don’t have the infrastructure to do that,” Hargreaves said. The BCDA also used the annual meeting to present the BC Milk Quality Award, calling it recognition of a “year-long paying attention to detail.”
The 2017 award went to
Fred Wikkerink of Wikksview Farm in Cobble Hill. Wikkerink has clearly made not a year- long but a lifetime commitment to producing the highest quality milk as he also won the award in 2016 and placed second in the 2015 competition.
be the first producer of GOS in North America,” he said. “Why isn’t more Canadian milk going into (GOS and other) new products?” he asks, then answers his own question by saying innovation is “challenging” in Canada. He noted it took Vitalus six years
to get GOS from idea to production. “That’s too long,” he
stresses. “Competitors do it in 18 to 24 months.” And it’s still not done because of failures at the Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA) and Health
Canada. “CFIA is refusing to issue a health certificate which we need to export GOS” to India and elsewhere he says, adding MPC exports offer a huge opportunity since they are not subject to any tariff barriers.
COUNTRY LIFE IN BC • JANUARY 2018
BC Dairy Association vice-chair Holger Schwichtenberg, left, presents the 2017 BC Milk Quality Award to Fred Wikkerink of Wikksview Farms in Cobble Hill during the BCDA annual meeting. DAVID SCHMIDT PHOTO
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