Farmscape for March 25, 2016

The Executive Director of the Manitoba Livestock Manure Management Initiative is hopeful a review of federal feed regulations will result in changes to minimum phosphorus inclusions in livestock feed.
The Canadian Food Inspection Agency is reviewing the federal livestock feed regulatory framework and has scheduled town hall sessions for March 30 in Saskatoon and March 31 in Winnipeg to gather stakeholder input.
John Carney, the Executive Director of the Manitoba Livestock Manure Management Initiative, notes minimum phosphorus inclusions outlined in Table-4 of the Feeds Act have limited the ability of feed formulators to reduce phosphorus levels in the feed and therefore in the manure.

Clip-John Carney-Manitoba Livestock Manure Management Initiative:
We conducted a swine nutrition survey back in 2013 and Manitoba nutritionists at that time indicated to us that they saw opportunities to reduce nutrient levels in feed beyond the Table 4 requirements because there's been tremendous advances in our understanding of available nutrients in the rations that are being fed, there's been significant advances in phytase, an enzyme that helps the animal utilize more of the nutrients in feed and also there's new ingredients that have come on the scene, like dried distiller grains.
The potential of reducing excess nutrients in feed rations would be a great breakthrough.
If we can dial in the nutrients in the feed to what the animal requires and have less nutrients excreted, that is a far more cost effective solution to nutrient reduction in the manure than trying to isolate the phosphorus after the fact and move it to the lands that need more phosphorus.

Carney says, over time, Table 4 has become out of date and the potential to see it updated is exciting news.
For Farmscape.Ca, I'm Bruce Cochrane.

       *Farmscape is a presentation of Sask Pork and Manitoba Pork