COUNTRY LIFE IN BC • NOVEMBER 2018
Meat processing review fails to meet expectations
Select standing committee calls for more consultation; lacks action by TOM WALKER
MERRITT – First it dodged half the province by cancelling a week of scheduled meetings in June and now it’s squandering the chance to show leadership and help the BC meat processing industry move forward. The legislature’s Select Standing Committee on Agriculture, Fish and Food has delivered its final report, making no definitive recommendations on the key issues it was asked to address. “This is a very safe report,”
says Julia Smith of Blue Sky Ranch in Merritt and president of the Small-Scale Meat Producers Association. The committee’s 21
recommendations use bland wording, she said, such as “encourage,” “work with” and “investigate options.” “There are not a lot of
recommendations that can be implemented without more time-consuming, resource- intensive processes,” Smith says. “For all of the time and effort that has been spent across the province, this report doesn’t put us much further ahead.” The lacklustre report
follows a decision the nine-
member committee made to cancel an entire week of meetings scheduled in June and hold just three days of hearings. The move ruled out face-
to-face meetings with stakeholders in the Peace, Prince George, southern Vancouver Island and the entire Lower Mainland. Ultimately, the committee based its recommendations on 50 oral presentations as well as 36 written submissions and 74 online survey responses, many of which offered well-considered and thorough perspectives. “I submitted 27 written pages of recommendations that were all reviewed by my board of directors,” notes Nova Woodbury of the BC Abattoirs Association. “For each item that the presentation spoke to, we gave specific strategies on how the issue might be solved.”
The committee also had the benefit of the 96-page report on D & E class licensing that summarized the findings of a targeted survey conducted in May, just prior to the committee’s own hearings.
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Valley Wide Meats owner Richard Yntema told BC Sheep Federation members what most small-scale meat producers already know: they have to book slaughter times months in advance because there isn’t enough capacity or manpower to meet demand for services. CATHY GLOVER PHOTO
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