Union leaders and political critics claim Stephen Harper’s Conservative government is putting British Columbians’ health at risk as part of a misguided effort to save money.
But cattle ranchers believe that a Canadian Food Inspection Agency decision to return meatpacking plant inspection responsibilities to Victoria could result in a more streamlined and cheaper regime.
The B.C. government has contracted Ottawa to inspect provincially regulated meat-packing plants for more than a decade.
Even though they’re not considered part of the Canadian Food Inspection Agency’s (CFIA) core mandate, Ottawa subsidizes those inspections.
That will stop by 2014, the CFIA announced earlier this month.
“The B.C. government is going to have to put up some extra money to keep up the good work of the inspections or they could cut them back to where they’re meaningless,” said Bill Freding, who owns Southern Plus Feedlots and is president of the BC Association of Cattle Feeders.
He hopes that Victoria will look to Alberta where he said the provincially regulated beef-slaughterhouse inspection system is more efficient and just as safe as in British Columbia.
“The federal government has lots of requirements. They make it pretty sticky and pretty expensive just to comply, not that the regulations have improved safety at all,” Freding said.
“There might be a head inspector who will say you need this door to be three feet, six inches and not three feet wide.”
Five years ago, B.C. had at least three federally inspected beef slaughterhouses – all of which have since gone out of business, Freding said.
The closest federally inspected beef slaughterhouse is now in Alberta. That means that if a B.C. cattle rancher wants to sell his beef outside of B.C., he has to ship the live cattle to Alberta to be butchered.
If the rancher sends his cattle to one of the 48 provincially regulated slaughterhouses – some of which process poultry and hogs only – he must sell that meat within B.C.
Those slaughterhouses, however, are far more convenient because many of them are in mobile trailers.
Freding hopes that the ban on selling meat from those slaughterhouses outside B.C. will change as B.C., Alberta and Saskatchewan strengthen their New West Partnership – an agreement aimed at liberalizing trade and eliminating trade barriers between the three provinces.
Agriculture Union – PSAC president Bob Kingston and Vancouver Quadra MP Joyce Murray have criticized the CFIA decision to pull out of inspecting provincially regulated slaughterhouses. They argue that the move will increase risk to consumers of consuming E. coli, listeria, salmonella and other food contaminants.
B.C. Health Minister Mike de Jong was not available to respond to that criticism, but B.C. health ministry spokesman Stephen May told Business in Vancouver “there will not be a reduction in safety standards.”
He said the ministry has been aware of the CFIA’s decision since last year and that, starting early this year, the B.C. government launched a review of provincial meat-inspection services.
“[B.C.’s ministry of health] will be providing options for the next steps by the fall,” May said. “We are confident that we will find a solution that works well for producers and processors while keeping the safety of meat products paramount.”
Cathy Airth, the CFIA’s associate vice-president in its operations branch, also told BIV that the transition likely won’t streamline bureaucracy. “It was a long-standing service that was well entrenched and didn’t have huge management oversight,” Airth said. “The province may step up and say they’d like to take some of our staff.”
According to the BC Cattlemen’s Association, B.C.’s cattle industry has primarily cow calves and the province’s 4,086 cattle ranches account for about 4.5% of Canada’s cow-calf herd. •
