Paul Hetherington National Bakers Association

[gustgd]

https://www.realagriculture.com/2015/01/farmers-cautioned-risk-mycotoxins-allergens-showing-food/

Paul was one of my favourite speakers at the WCWGA convention, and a very engaging supper companion.

His warning about micro toxins and OTA contamination are IMO one of the biggest "black swan" risks we face as an industry.
(Can something be called a black swan if it's predicted?)

Although I would say that bakers and processors are fooling themselves if they think they can download costs on a commodity product. They can preach best practices, but without incentives farmers will put their produce onto the world market and take the futures price for it.
They may talk about market access issues to farmers if we don't conform to their standards, I would attain that they will have supply chain issues if they don't pay up.
If bakers want an IP product they don't get to do it at commodity pricing

[charliep]

I'll post a link to the Baking Association of Canada website on this topic. I don't know if the argument is with farmers or CFIA. Their issue is more measurement and regulation around OTA in their world.

[URL="http://www.bakingassoccanada.com/Food%20and%20Nutrition%20Policy%20Revised/Mycotoxins%20OTA%20Final.pdf"]OTA[/URL]

[gustgd]

Thanks for the link Charlie.

My take away was that you can't see it,it's been there forever and that Avery small amount can spoil a large batch of produce.

I fully encourage farmers to use best practices to help mitigate storage damage , and I fully support WGRF Iin conjunction with end users and baking groups to test and develope new standards and best practices for Canadian farmers.

What needs to be restated for the bakers is, that with extra costs on the farm has extra cost to the millers