By Rod Nickel
SAN FRANCISCO, March 18 (Reuters) - The Canadian government and the country's canola crushers are working on a document they hope will help crushers regain the confidence of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), which has refused canola meal shipments from some of Canada's biggest plants.
Several of those plants -- owned by Viterra Inc, Bunge Ltd and Archer Daniels Midland -- are under increased scrutiny from the FDA because some shipments contained salmonella, a bacteria that can cause food-borne illness. The FDA has placed those plants on import-alert status, making it more difficult for those companies to deliver canola meal to the United States, the top export market.
Canola meal is used as feed for animals, not human food.
The document will contain best management practices for canola crushers in line with new feed-safety regulations that the FDA is developing, said Ken Stone, chairman of the Canadian Oilseed Processors Association and also Cargill's commercial manager of oilseed processing.
'That will create, we hope, industry-wide practices on minimizing salmonella .. and hopefully allow the (two countries') regulatory agencies to come to an understanding,' Stone said on the sidelines of the Canola Council of Canada conference in San Francisco.
The FDA, which has said it will not change its zero tolerance for salmonella detection, has not said whether the document will make any difference to how it inspects Canadian canola meal.
The FDA's acceptance of the document would also not allow plants to get off import-alert status more quickly, Stone said.
'There's no magic bullet. It remains to be seen what that (document) is going to do.'
Canada's ambassador to the United States, Gary Doer, said he is working closely with the canola industry on the issue, in a wide-ranging interview with Reuters in Washington.
'I think we're working on a solution for that (salmonella issue),' Doer said. 'I'm not going to say anything more.'
The volume of Canadian canola meal to California -- where the meal is a popular protein source for dairy cattle -- has fallen roughly by half this year, said Dave Hickling, vice-president of utilization for the Canola Council. Exporters shipped about 800,000 tonnes to the state last year, he said.
The salmonella issue is costly not only to Canadian crushers, but to U.S. dairy farmers as well. Less of one type of meal lifts the prices of all protein sources for cattle feed, said Peter de Jong, who milks 16,000 cows on his farm at Hanford, California.
'It shorts the market,' he said in an interview.
He estimates that his cattle feed costs have risen US$20 to $30 per tonne, amounting to a daily additional expense of roughly US$900 to $2,000, depending on how much feed his cattle eat. That comes at a time when U.S. dairy farmers are already under acute pressure from weak milk prices.
'The last year has been a real challenge,' he said.
(Additional reporting by Roberta Rampton in Washington; Editing by David Gregorio) Keywords: CANOLA MEAL CANADA/ US (rod.nickel@thomsonreuters.com; 1-204-230-6043) COPYRIGHT Copyright Thomson Reuters 2010. All rights reserved. The copying, republication or redistribution of Reuters News Content, including by framing or similar means, is expressly prohibited without the prior written consent of Thomson Reuters.
SAN FRANCISCO, March 18 (Reuters) - The Canadian government and the country's canola crushers are working on a document they hope will help crushers regain the confidence of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), which has refused canola meal shipments from some of Canada's biggest plants.
Several of those plants -- owned by Viterra Inc, Bunge Ltd and Archer Daniels Midland -- are under increased scrutiny from the FDA because some shipments contained salmonella, a bacteria that can cause food-borne illness. The FDA has placed those plants on import-alert status, making it more difficult for those companies to deliver canola meal to the United States, the top export market.
Canola meal is used as feed for animals, not human food.
The document will contain best management practices for canola crushers in line with new feed-safety regulations that the FDA is developing, said Ken Stone, chairman of the Canadian Oilseed Processors Association and also Cargill's commercial manager of oilseed processing.
'That will create, we hope, industry-wide practices on minimizing salmonella .. and hopefully allow the (two countries') regulatory agencies to come to an understanding,' Stone said on the sidelines of the Canola Council of Canada conference in San Francisco.
The FDA, which has said it will not change its zero tolerance for salmonella detection, has not said whether the document will make any difference to how it inspects Canadian canola meal.
The FDA's acceptance of the document would also not allow plants to get off import-alert status more quickly, Stone said.
'There's no magic bullet. It remains to be seen what that (document) is going to do.'
Canada's ambassador to the United States, Gary Doer, said he is working closely with the canola industry on the issue, in a wide-ranging interview with Reuters in Washington.
'I think we're working on a solution for that (salmonella issue),' Doer said. 'I'm not going to say anything more.'
The volume of Canadian canola meal to California -- where the meal is a popular protein source for dairy cattle -- has fallen roughly by half this year, said Dave Hickling, vice-president of utilization for the Canola Council. Exporters shipped about 800,000 tonnes to the state last year, he said.
The salmonella issue is costly not only to Canadian crushers, but to U.S. dairy farmers as well. Less of one type of meal lifts the prices of all protein sources for cattle feed, said Peter de Jong, who milks 16,000 cows on his farm at Hanford, California.
'It shorts the market,' he said in an interview.
He estimates that his cattle feed costs have risen US$20 to $30 per tonne, amounting to a daily additional expense of roughly US$900 to $2,000, depending on how much feed his cattle eat. That comes at a time when U.S. dairy farmers are already under acute pressure from weak milk prices.
'The last year has been a real challenge,' he said.
(Additional reporting by Roberta Rampton in Washington; Editing by David Gregorio) Keywords: CANOLA MEAL CANADA/ US (rod.nickel@thomsonreuters.com; 1-204-230-6043) COPYRIGHT Copyright Thomson Reuters 2010. All rights reserved. The copying, republication or redistribution of Reuters News Content, including by framing or similar means, is expressly prohibited without the prior written consent of Thomson Reuters.