Deborah Whale did not grow up on a farm, but after marrying a farmer and getting her foot into agriculture, she has offered much to the industry.
Whale was nominated by the Poultry Industry Council as a 2016 inductee to the Ontario Agricultural Hall of Fame for her contributions in the fields of on-farm biosecurity and infectious disease control.
She will be inducted at a June 12 ceremony at Country Heritage Park in Milton.
“I think that the whole issue of on-farm biosecurity became very important as we realized how easy it was for livestock and poultry diseases to spread from one farm to another,” Whale said in a Feb. 29 interview with the Advertiser.
“At the Poultry Industry Council, we began a whole program that involved research, training and education, establishment of protocols, in order to look at issues of disease control, disease prevention, and very importantly emergency preparedness.”
Whale served as chair for the council from 1996 to 2006 and she also worked in developing a poultry research team at the University of Guelph, lobbied successfully for what became the Animal Health Act and for what became the Chief Veterinarian Office in Ontario.
Whale then became a founding director of the Ontario Livestock and Poultry Council, which brought together livestock groups to work on biosecurity initiatives to control disease. The council also developed production insurance for the livestock industry.
“If the livestock and poultry industries were to be challenged by external forces, then there would be production insurance in place to replace what had been lost,” she explained.
Whale also sat on the Grand River Agricultural Society philanthropic committee, which runs the Grand River Raceway.
The committee put “considerable funds” into the development of an equine biosecurity program with Equine Guelph.
Whale said she has “spent countless, countless hours speaking to groups, politicians, interested organizations over the years about a variety of things such as anti-microbial resistance, to work on the reduction and control of antibiotics in livestock and poultry.”
Whale has also opened her farm for tours and an epidemiology planning exercise in 2010.
Whale received an honourary Professional Agrologist Award in 2011 by the Ontario Institute of Agrologists for her work in mentoring and finding mentors for new Canadians looking to work in agriculture.
Whale’s father Dr. George Jones, aka “the corn king of Ontario,” was inducted into the same hall of fame in 2006. They are the first father-daughter duo ever to be inducted.
“It’s a huge honour and a total surprise, I’m just really … pleased. It’s very nice to be acknowledged for what has been amazing lifetime efforts,” said Whale.
In 2014 her farm, Clovermead Farms in Mapleton Township, south of Drayton, received the Dairy Farmers Sustainability Award. In 2000, she gave a TEDx talk in Stouffville about building a future for agriculture in Canada.
