Beyond the Borders: British Columbia’s Approach to Meat
Posted: July 25, 2012
Categories: Food in the News / GoodFoodBites / The Meat Press
by Drew Gale, Sustain Ontario volunteer
When it comes to the decline in small-scale abattoirs and meat processors, the meat industry in Ontario is not unique. All across North America, small farmers and independent abattoirs, processors and retailers are facing similar challenges: A growing appreciation for local meats among the public is expanding demand for their products, yet there is a dearth in regionally-based meat processing facilities. While there are many systemic factors contributing to this decline, the cost of complying with recent regulatory changes is one that some small-scale operators are naming as an important one. Corporate and geographic consolidation of slaughter and processing facilities, the middle links of the supply chain, can also leave livestock producers and local butcher shops high and dry, especially in more remote, sparsely settled areas.
In British Columbia, the story is similar, but industry players from Ontario might take interest in a few key differences. While some BC farmers or small meat processors would say there is still room for regulatory improvement, they do have options to meet business challenges currently unavailable in Ontario, including mobile abattoirs and on-farm commercial slaughter. To understand how these options may or may not be applicable here though, they need to be put into context.
The meat industry in Canada’s western-most province has always operated on a scale that might seem quaint by national standards. The rugged topography confines agricultural lands to narrow valley-bottom ribbons, precluding the development of large-scale farming operations found in Ontario and the Prairies. Although the largest cattle ranches in Canada can be found on the Thompson and Fraser Plateaus in the Interior, no federally licensed slaughter facilities for beef or other red-meat species exist in the province. This requires producers wishing to sell their animals out of province to truck their animals across the Rockies to Alberta for finishing and slaughter. Elsewhere, small farms dominate the landscape, operating at or just above hobby-scale.
Until recently, provincial meat inspection in British Columbia was markedly decentralized. The decision to implement inspection programs for locally marketed meat was left to the discretion of municipalities. On-farm slaughter for commercial purposes was legal and largely unsupervised. The province lacked its own inspection body, and where the service was required CFIA personal were hired on contract.
Between the 1960’s and the early years of the new century, little about this regulatory environment changed (1). All this stood in sharp contrast to meat inspection under OMAFRA in Ontario, where inspection of any animal slaughtered for sale within the province became mandatory in 1991, and the system has been subject to near constant study and alteration for decades, as part of a drive to harmonize provincial and federal standards (2).
In 2003, the BSE crisis touched off dramatic change in BC. The following year saw the passage of the new Meat Inspection Regulation, and after a grace period ending in September 2007, all meat destined for sale within the province was required to pass through a licensed and inspected slaughter facility (3). The impact of this night-and-day change was stark: Excluding poultry, the number of livestock raised for meat in the province had dropped by a third by the end of 2011, and by some estimates over one hundred small abattoirs had folded.
To their credit, BC Ministry of Health, responsible for the new MIR, has made efforts to ease the industry through the transition. In partnership with the BC Food Processor’s Association, the ministry funded two programs, one to help small operations with regulatory compliance issues, the other to provide capital cost-sharing assistance for renovations and new plant construction. Among those who took advantage of these programs were a handful of entrepreneurs who saw potential in a fairly novel idea – mobile abattoirs.
The concept of bringing the slaughterhouse to the animals instead of the animals to the slaughterhouse had been pioneered across the border in Washington State, in the early 2000’s. There, a group of farmers raising pasture-fed animals on the scattered islands of Puget Sound formed a co-operative to purchase and manage North America’s first abattoir on wheels. The model was adopted by an entrepreneur in Northeastern British Columbia in 2007, and at present there are six mobiles licensed and operating province wide, with more in the works. In several cases, the initiative to start a mobile abattoir was initiated by local agricultural societies and farm associations, composed of farmers who had no other legal option for getting their product to market once the only local mom and pop processor closed down. Faced with the prospect of having to transport their animals long distances, including ferry crossings and unreliable mountain passes, these farmers banded together to provide the service to themselves.
In 2010 the BC government made a fundamental change to its still new Meat Inspection Regulation. Acting on feedback from other livestock producers struggling with lack of access to licensed facilities, the Ministry re-introduced provisions for on-farm slaughter in some parts of the province, this time under a licensing system (4). One licensing category exists for direct marketing, another for retail, but both restrict sales to within the farms own regional district, BC’s large upper-tier municipalities. The change was explicitly limited to geographic areas where licensed slaughter facilities, whether fixed or mobile, did not exist; sparsely populated districts of the northern coast and interior. At present, the province has issued almost as many licenses for on-farm slaughter as it has for dedicated facilities (5).
The latest development in the ongoing evolution of meat inspection in British Columbia is the preparation for the withdrawal of Canadian Food Inspection Agency staff from provincial inspection duties at the end of 2013. In preparing to take full responsibility for this service, the province has been consulting with farmers and industry members, and is considering a ‘results-based’ approach to abattoir inspection(6). Such a system would require plant operators to achieve certain outcomes without proscribing how. In past comments posted to this blog, such an approach has been discussed as a possible improvement to Ontario’s existing meat inspection program. British Columbia offers a glimpse of a province where regulation is done differently. Faced with similar economic problems, farmers and meat processors in that province have more options available to find solutions than their counterparts in Ontario do at the moment. The use of mobile abattoirs and licensed on-farm slaughter in BC could present some interesting insights here as well.
Sources:
(2) Ontario Provincial Meat Inspection Program – Ontario Independent Meat Processors Association
(4), (5),(6) Report on the B.C. Abattoir Inspection System Review: Overview, Findings and Recommendations, December 2011
Drew Gale is a recent transplant from Western Canada and has worked on small scale farms in both British Columbia and Ontario. Although back in the city now, he maintains a strong interest in where his food comes from.