Castanet

does anyone else find it totally crazy that the Liberal government has driven many small butcher shops out of business with the new inspection rules and we have 1500 meat products being recalled right now from big box stores.
i think its time the government reversed this and allowed us the rights to purchase locally from who we want.

The plant at the centre of the biggest beef recall in Canadian history wasn't properly following some safety procedures, the head of the Canadian Food Inspection Agency says.

George Da Pont said Wednesday the CFIA had issued seven corrective action requests to the XL Foods plant in Brooks, Alta., and was monitoring them before the agency decided to shut the plant down.

It appears the plant wasn't always using one of the measures that Federal Agriculture Minister Gerry Ritz pointed to Wednesday as a "safety valve" for the Canadian meat industry.

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-c ... ecall.html

keith1612 wrote:does anyone else find it totally crazy that the Liberal government has driven many small butcher shops out of business with the new inspection rules and we have 1500 meat products being recalled right now from big box stores.
i think its time the government reversed this and allowed us the rights to purchase locally from who we want.

Well yes, especially since not a single case of ecoli h0150 was ever traced to a small operation. A friend of mine ran a small slaughter/cut and freeze operation for 30 years with no problems. Then all of a sudden someone decides they are not safe with absolutely nothing to back up the claim.
To be allowed to slaughter as he was before he had to have a full time inspector on duty to inspect about 5 beef animals a day on a beef day and maybe 20 pigs on a pig day. He also had to build him a separate office and his own private washroom. This decision was just absolutely crazy.

XL Foods Inc. says it is taking full responsibility and pledged to regain the trust of consumers as a massive recall of meat intensified today, and Agriculture Minister Gerry Ritz repeated that the Alberta company's plant won't reopen until he and the Canadian Food Inspection Agency are assured it is safe.


ya thats helpfull and will make everyone who got sick feel much better.

http://news.ca.msn.com/top-stories/xl-f ... for-e-coli

butcher99 wrote: A friend of mine ran a small slaughter/cut and freeze operation for 30 years with no problems. Then all of a sudden someone decides they are not safe with absolutely nothing to back up the claim.
To be allowed to slaughter as he was before he had to have a full time inspector on duty to inspect about 5 beef animals a day on a beef day and maybe 20 pigs on a pig day. He also had to build him a separate office and his own private washroom. This decision was just absolutely crazy.

Yup, and there was a gov't grant to help your friend make those upgrades.
The reason why the regulation was put in place is because not all small operations were doing business in a safe manner.

Nom_de_Plume wrote:The reason why the regulation was put in place is because not all small operations were doing business in a safe manner.

It's working well with the big ones too eh?

Bsuds wrote:

Nom_de_Plume wrote:The reason why the regulation was put in place is because not all small operations were doing business in a safe manner.

It's working well with the big ones too eh?

No, the big ones are actually more dangerous in my opinion, there is a much bigger risk to the public when you're pumping out thousands of pounds of meat per day. From what I understand this federal plant in Brooks wasn't following their own food safety plans. Cleaning wasn't done on schedule, that sorta thing.

If that's the case then they should be fired and new management put in place who will do the job properly. No mercy for those who are supposed to make sure it's done.

Bsuds wrote:If that's the case then they should be fired and new management put in place who will do the job properly. No mercy for those who are supposed to make sure it's done.

I agree, there has to be some responsibility taken for putting the public at risk.

Nom_de_Plume wrote:

butcher99 wrote: A friend of mine ran a small slaughter/cut and freeze operation for 30 years with no problems. Then all of a sudden someone decides they are not safe with absolutely nothing to back up the claim.
To be allowed to slaughter as he was before he had to have a full time inspector on duty to inspect about 5 beef animals a day on a beef day and maybe 20 pigs on a pig day. He also had to build him a separate office and his own private washroom. This decision was just absolutely crazy.

Yup, and there was a gov't grant to help your friend make those upgrades.
The reason why the regulation was put in place is because not all small operations were doing business in a safe manner.

The grant would not have covered even 1/4 of the cost of building an office and a separate washroom for one guy. And if a good beef kill day is 5 animals how does a small operator make that pay?

This was just another bureaucrat thinking that there was a problem and creating a solution to which no problem existed. He had regular inspections for 30 years by the health department and never had any problems. He had a thriving business. Just himself and one helper for the days he cut up meat instead of slaughter.
Despite the all the regulations in place it is obvious that some very large operations are not doing business in a safe manner. Can you give me one instance of someone getting e. coli 0150 strain from a small operation? The small guys do it right. They take the time to properly remove the hide and remove the innards without the spread of contamination. They are not pushing one animal through every 15-20 seconds 24 hours a day.

butcher99 wrote:
The grant would not have covered even 1/4 of the cost of building an office and a separate washroom for one guy. And if a good beef kill day is 5 animals how does a small operator make that pay?

Wow, that's a mighty expensive washroom if a 100,000$ grant wouldn't cover it.
But really not going to argue with you about it. Most old time slaughter places (where the owner was very close to retirement age) decided the cost and hassle wasn't worth it.
I will admit that the whole implementation was a royal pain in the butt and if I had have known how much it was all going to cost and how much sleep I was going to lose with jumping though all the regulatory hoops and in some cases needing to negotiate alterations to some of those hoops I probably would never have gone through the upgrade process to become a licensed and inspected slaughterhouse.
I'm not saying the new system in place is any better than the old way, but I can understand why the law was put into place. The problem now seems to be enforcement. There is no point putting all these rules in place if no one is checking to make sure they're followed.

Nom_de_Plume wrote:
I will admit that the whole implementation was a royal pain in the butt and if I had have known how much it was all going to cost and how much sleep I was going to lose with jumping though all the regulatory hoops and in some cases needing to negotiate alterations to some of those hoops I probably would never have gone through the upgrade process to become a licensed and inspected slaughterhouse.
I'm not saying the new system in place is any better than the old way, but I can understand why the law was put into place. The problem now seems to be enforcement. There is no point putting all these rules in place if no one is checking to make sure they're followed.

Obviously you are not in the same business as my friend. You are one of the guys who got great benefit from it. You would pick up all the work from the fellows like my friend who only did a few animals a day. What is the sense of working if all the money goes to pay for a full time inspector? He did not do enough to hire a full time employee so how could he do enough to pay for the full time inspector as well.
The scale to which he would have had to ramp up his business and the equipment he would have had to purchase to be able to make it pay just was not worth it. A lot of people were placed in that position. Obviously you do much more killing than a one man operation did. These were the people who were hurt by this silly decision. People like you were the beneficiaries.
I understand why you think it was a good idea. You picked up new work to pay for your extra employee. The one that produces no gain for your company and probably made nothing safer.

[quote="Nom_de_Plume"
I will admit that the whole implementation was a royal pain in the butt and if I had have known how much it was all going to cost and how much sleep I was going to lose with jumping though all the regulatory hoops and in some cases needing to negotiate alterations to some of those hoops I probably would never have gone through the upgrade process to become a licensed and inspected slaughterhouse.
I'm not saying the new system in place is any better than the old way, but I can understand why the law was put into place. The problem now seems to be enforcement. There is no point putting all these rules in place if no one is checking to make sure they're followed.[/quote]

This might clear things up a bit. Do you purchase animals for slaughter and resale or do you just slaughter cut and freeze farm raised animals for their owners?

butcher99 wrote:

Nom_de_Plume wrote:I will admit that the whole implementation was a royal pain in the butt and if I had have known how much it was all going to cost and how much sleep I was going to lose with jumping though all the regulatory hoops and in some cases needing to negotiate alterations to some of those hoops I probably would never have gone through the upgrade process to become a licensed and inspected slaughterhouse.
I'm not saying the new system in place is any better than the old way, but I can understand why the law was put into place. The problem now seems to be enforcement. There is no point putting all these rules in place if no one is checking to make sure they're followed.

This might clear things up a bit. Do you purchase animals for slaughter and resale or do you just slaughter cut and freeze farm raised animals for their owners?

I'm a custom processor, so no... I don't purchase animals and resell them. The farmer retains ownership of their animals/meat throughout our entire process.
We are a tiny operation..... 8 ft wide and 22 ft long, we do poultry btw..... the inspector is paid for by the gov't I don't have to pay for them

Nom_de_Plume wrote:I'm a custom processor, so no... I don't purchase animals and resell them. The farmer retains ownership of their animals/meat throughout our entire process.
We are a tiny operation..... 8 ft wide and 22 ft long, we do poultry btw..... the inspector is paid for by the gov't I don't have to pay for them

Ok, that is who I thought you were. So this is a different game altogether than a beef pork slaughter operation. He used to visit the farm with a mobile slaughter system and kill the animal there. He would then load them up and take them back to his operation where he had the coolers, scalding tanks, skinning areas etc setup. This was his money time of year. All the hunters with their game which is a real pain to cut btw, made his year.
Now he cuts meat in a retail chain and has no more of the headaches.