The head of one of Canada’s top food-processing companies is dishing out some food for thought with a plan to bolster an agri-food sector that has been hit hard by drought, mad cow disease and avian flu.

Michael McCain, president and CEO of Toronto-based Maple Leaf Foods Inc., is calling for a “Team Canada” approach to raise and protect the country’s food brand around the world, along with the need for an increased emphasis on food safety.

With agri-business being Canada’s third-largest employer, contributing more than eight per cent of the annual GDP and accounting for more than six per cent of total exports, McCain told a recent Growing Alberta conference that the time has come for Canada to take the lead.

“It’s not about being the same. It’s about finding points of difference,” McCain told 350 agriculture and food business leaders on hand for the one- day meeting last week at Northlands AgriCom in Edmonton.

Jack Dagley, Business Edge
Michael McCain of Maple Leaf Foods supports special reporting zones for animal disease control.

“It means not simply being content with matching the Americans or Europeans – but outmatching them. They are fierce competitors and quickly gaining ground in highly lucrative global markets.”

McCain said Canada must leverage its excellent reputation and emphasize its difference in quality and food safety. A “Made In Canada” brand could be developed as something akin to German automobiles or New Zealand lamb, worthy of even more price premiums, he argued.

“The impression of Canada as (having) wide-open spaces, clean air and pure water needs to be backed up by agri-business practices that are best-in-class,” McCain said, adding all industry players must join together to successfully build Canada’s reputation in this area.

McCain also would like to see regional zoning instituted, to protect consumers and manage risk by containing risk to a subsection of the industry in situations such as the recent bovine spongiform encephalopathy or avian flu crises. Emergency plans to deal with such situations need to be in place before any outbreak hits, he added, and provincial and federal food inspection systems must be streamlined.

“North America is vast and without zoning, we are hugely vulnerable to the economic and social impact of animal health incidents. The European Union has eight or more zones for reportable animal diseases while Canada is barely funding the process to have even the most basic zones established,” said McCain.

But while zoning worked in containing the recent outbreak in avian flu in British Columbia, most countries did not recognize the move, he said, noting the importance of having worldwide acceptance for the practice to work and to keep markets open.

McCain also supports recommendations to align meat production standards more effectively across the country. “At a minimum, we need all provinces to move aggressively to adopt a shared high standard of meat inspection, and in fact we should question whether having dual inspection systems is necessary or helpful.”

Maple Leaf, with 2003 sales of $5 billion and 23,000 staff, employs more than 1,700 people in Alberta. The company says it generates direct economic benefits of almost $700 million and indirect benefits to the province of close to $1.2 billion.

In Alberta, its facilities include a poultry processing operation in Edmonton, a potato processing plant and a pork processing facility in Lethbridge, feed mills in Strathmore, Medicine Hat, Claresholm and Lethbridge, and hog production operations in partnership with local producers.

Through its recent acquisition of Schneider Foods, the company has a large distribution centre in Edmonton, which serves Western Canada.

On the bakery side, McCain’s Calgary plant is one of the largest bagel manufacturing facilities in Canada and North America.

Most of the goods Maple Leaf produces in Alberta are headed for export markets. The Lethbridge pork plant processes more than 1,300 hogs per day for the Japanese market, while more than 50 per cent of the potatoes processed in its Alberta plant are shipped to global markets such as Southeast Asia, Saudi Arabia, China and Mexico.

“Alberta is really a microcosm of the Canadian agri-business as a whole,” said McCain. “More than 50 per cent of Canadian agri-business products, from grain to fresh and processed food products, are shipped to markets outside Canada.”

Growing Alberta is a government-funded public awareness program designed to publicize the benefits of Alberta’s agriculture and food industry. Chairman Aaron Falkenberg noted that McCain “is not only a leader in the agriculture and food industry, he is a key individual in Canadian business.”

“With the challenge of BSE, avian flu, closed borders and drought, it was a critical time for our industry to learn from his perspective,” Falkenberg said.

The association held its leadership awards to honour vision and achievement in Alberta agriculture just before the McCain speech.

Olds College was named the winner in the Agricultural Advocates category; Classroom Agriculture Program Volunteers won the Community Spirit award; Alberta Sunflower Seeds Ltd. was named as the winner in Economic Development; Alberta Reduced Tillage Linkages won the award for Environmental Stewardship; the Food Safety Information Group won in Food Safety and the Country Soul Stroll came out on top in the Innovation category.

(Laura Severs can be reached at laura@businessedge.ca)