The Rural Voice, 2003-07, Page 26Mike Beretta was
among the 40 per cent
of small abattoir
operators who closed
their plants since 1991,
uable to meet
i ceasing inspection
st ndards.71.1
ii:battair
Sinking Together?
As small abattoirs close, alternative
meat producers find their futures
in danger too.
By Keith Roulston
The ability to choose an
alternative to mainstream,
commodity -based agriculture,
depends on an alternative
infrastructure to support it. For
alternative meat producers, that
makes the decline of the small
abattoir a crucial concern.
Whether you're producing
pasture -fed beef or organic pork or
elk and bison, the existence of small,
usually provincially -licenced,
abattoirs is the key to being able to
sell your product. Large packing
plants are not going to take on small
qualities of animals that don't fit the
scale the plant was designed for.
But figures compiled by the Perth -
Oxford branch of the National
Farmers Union for a meeting on the
plight of small abattoirs, shows that
40 per cent of the 351 small abattoirs
that were in business in Ontario in
1991 have disappeared. As standards
for Ontario -inspected plants move
closer to those of federally -inspected
plants, pressure on small abattoir
owners to upgrade is becoming ever
harder to deal with.
The problem, said Neil Metheral
of Metheral Meats in Creemore, who
specializes in sheep, is not with meat
inspectors themselves who oversee
the processing of meat, but with plant
auditors who periodically inspect the
plants.
Metheral recalled a visit by an
auditor who gave his plant seven
severe and five critical deficiencies.
When he expressed dismay at the
22 THE RURAL VOICE
inspection results the auditor
wondered why, feeling that wasn't
really a bad result at all.
Given that one of the critical
deficiencies was that a light bulb was
burned out, the auditor was probably
more correct in his assessment of the
seriousness of the .situation than
Metheral, but the plant owner himself
felt that so many deficiencies should
indicate something very wrong, not
minor things.
It's these kinds of standards that
seem to irk small plant owners.
When he threw in the towel and
closed his abattoir and butcher shop
in Brussels in 1999, Mike Beretta
cited larger issues such as replace-
ment of wooden pens with steel pens
and expansion of the cooler but
others that seemed to have little to do
with food safety, such as the fact the
lane to his tiny plant wasn't paved.
Metheral agrees. Plant owners can
get bad marks for the grass not being
cut, he says.
With a fairly new plant, he has no
problem with rats, but one of the
auditors complained that he wasn't
doing enough to record how he
combatted rats. Though he'd never
seen a rat, one day he invented one so
he would then document how he rid
the place of the rat. An inspector,
who knew there was no rat problem,
chuckled at his creativity.
But it's those deficiencies filed by
auditors that attract the attention
when media do investigations of the
meat inspection system in Ontario
and find it wanting. Grass that's not
cut or burned -out light bulbs get
added right in with more serious
deficiencies in showing that there are
major problems.
The recent BSE scare in Alberta
has brought more focus to the hunt
for problems with Ontario's system.
A Canadian Press wire service story
on June 13 linked concerns about the
number of part-time meat inspectors
being used in Ontario plants to
concerns over catching BSE -infected
animals.
With pressure for tougher,
not more relaxed standards,
politicians like Helen
Johns, Ontario's Minister of
Agriculture and Food, are torn
between practicality and political
reality. When the issue of pressure
faced by small abattoirs was raised at
the Huron County Federation of
Agriculture's Members of Parliament
meeting in March, Johns said she
wants to keep food processing alive
in rural areas but federal regulations
are much tougher than provincial.
"As we move closer to federal
regulation it is tougher on the little
guys. But if we don't move closer to
the federal regulations and something
could go wrong, it could affect the
whole agrifood industry." Almost as
a premonition of the BSE outbreak
she warned of the possibility of
losing export markets if something
slipped through the cracks of the
inspection system.
As well, "How could I look