The committee met at 4:02 p.m.

[R. Leonard in the chair.]

R. Leonard (Chair): Good afternoon, everyone. We’ll get started now.

My name is Ronna-Rae Leonard. I’m the MLA for Courtenay-Comox and the Chair of the Select Standing Committee on Agriculture, Fish and Food. I’d like to begin with the recognition that our public hearing today is taking place on the traditional territory of the Homalco, K’ómoks and Tla’amin people.

We’re an all-party committee of the Legislative Assembly with the mandate to examine matters concerning agriculture, fish and food in British Columbia. The committee’s first inquiry is focused on local meat production and inspection in B.C. This consultation is based on the discussion paper that was referred to the committee earlier this spring, which includes a number of questions asking about what’s working well in the local meat industry and how improvements can be made to better serve all British Columbians.

The committee is holding a number of public hearings in communities around the province. British Columbians can participate in these public hearings either in person or by teleconference.

There are other ways that British Columbians can submit their ideas to the committee, including completing an on-line survey or sending in a written, audio or video submission. More information about how to do this is available on the committee’s website at www.leg.bc.ca/cmt/aff. We invite all British Columbians to contribute to this important process.

For those of you in attendance, we thank you for taking the time to participate today.

All public input will be carefully considered by the committee as it prepares its final report to the Legislative Assembly, which will be presented on or before October 1, 2018. Just a reminder, the consultation will close on Friday, June 15, at 5 p.m.

Today’s meeting will consist of presentations from registered witnesses. Each presenter will have ten minutes to speak, followed by five minutes for the committee to ask questions. All meetings are recorded and transcribed by Hansard Services, over there, and a complete transcript of the proceeding will be posted on the committee’s website. These meetings are also broadcast as live audio via our website.

I’d like now to introduced the members of the committee. I’ll have them introduce themselves. We’ll start with Jackie Tegart, who’s the Deputy Chair of this committee.

J. Tegart (Deputy Chair): Good afternoon. I’m Jackie Tegart, MLA for Fraser-Nicola, and pleased to be on this committee as the Deputy Chair.

D. Barnett: I’m Donna Barnett, and I’m from the Cariboo-Chilcotin. It is a pleasure to be here, and I look forward to hearing your comments.

[4:05 p.m.]

I. Paton: Good afternoon. My name is Ian Paton. I represent Delta South. I’m from a dairy farm in my family. I was originally partners in McClary Stockyards in Abbotsford, so I’ve had a few years’ experience of buying and selling beef cattle.

M. Morris: Mike Morris. I’m the MLA for Prince George–Mackenzie, which is the geographical centre of great British Columbia.

N. Simons: I’m Nicholas Simons. I represent Powell River–Sunshine Coast. I have a nice view every day, and I have a nice view today, looking back.

R. Singh: Rachna Singh, MLA for Surrey–Green Timbers.

D. Routley: I’m Doug Routley. I’m the MLA for Nanaimo–North Cowichan.

R. Leonard (Chair): Thank you. It’s a real pleasure to serve with this committee. They all have a good interest in the subject matter. As they’ve all said, we’re looking forward to hearing your comments. Assisting the committee today are Jennifer Arril and Stephanie Raymond, from the Parliamentary Committees Office. Simon DeLaat and Amanda Heffelfinger, from Hansard Services, are also here to record the proceedings.

Today we start with our very first presenter to this committee, Heather Shobe from the Alberni-Clayoquot regional district. You have ten minutes to speak. We’ll let you know when we’re getting to the last couple of minutes.

Presentations on
Meat Production and Inspection

ALBERNI-CLAYOQUOT REGIONAL DISTRICT

H. Shobe: Thank you very much. I am really grateful for the opportunity to be here. I’ve been on contract with the Alberni-Clayoquot regional district since 2014 as an agricultural support worker. Access to red-meat slaughter has been identified as a primary barrier to producers in our region since that time and before.

I am well aware of the complexities in the system, and I appreciate that some of you might be on a bit of a learning curve. I really appreciate you participating and hearing us. I want to offer you a perspective of a regional government and a small agricultural community today.

In 2016, the ACRD commissioned a feasibility study for a class A and a class B abattoir. The results were deemed unworkable, and producers requested that we apply for regional designation, allowing the opportunity to develop class D facilities. We had very strong turnout for a public meeting and a virtually unanimous voice.

In 2017, we finalized a collaborative background report and made the official request to the province. Have you guys seen that paper? That was submitted electronically, so you’ll have a copy of our full report.

I’ve been involved in several discussions with people from the Ministry of Agriculture and the meat inspection agency as well as our environmental health officer from Island Health.

I’d like to say, firstly, that we don’t have an issue or a problem with the inspection of meat products per se. Our producers would welcome a class A or B facility, generally. It’s just that it’s unattainable at present, and under the current system, we don’t have the right to explore or develop smaller options.

We’re in a vacuum, and our producers are falling through the cracks. The lack of a local facility is contributing to the decline in our local livestock production and stunting opportunities for growth.

The current transport requirements place great stress on the animals. I won’t delve into the particular challenges of the single mountain pass out of the Alberni Valley, which you can read about in our report. I will reiterate also, though, that our geography includes coastal regions whose residents and livestock are subject to an additional mountain pass and a drive of well over 3½ hours to reach a class A or B facility.

It is correct that, technically, our producers could apply for class E licences under the current regulations. However, there’s little chance of approval because of the perceived proximity to established A or B facilities. More importantly, what we really need is the ability to develop class D licences.

Imagine, if you will, a community of producers in a small and relatively isolated region. Most of them work off-farm to maintain a required level of income. Most are small-scale family businesses, and historically they’ve worked together to solve problems at a local level. A class E facility doesn’t solve the problems here.

Unless a producer has a large amount of a specialty product, they’re not likely to expend the required resources and develop a licensed plant solely for their own use. Rather, they seek to work together as a community — a number of sheep farmers, for example, developing a facility and a schedule locally and working together to help each other out at the time of need.

This is traditional agriculture, and it’s a sustainable community system. It shares financial resources. It supports a social system. And it minimizes environmental impact and stress to the animals.

[4:10 p.m.]

It’s much less realistic and efficient for each farmer to develop their own class E facility. However, with D licence as a stepping stone, our community could succeed in stimulating production and resources enough that eventually a fully inspected facility becomes viable.

This has been evidenced in other communities. In Powell River, class D and E facilities are considering expansion, subject to high demand. Facilities in Kimberley and Fernie have transitioned from uninspected to inspected facilities because of their success.

Animal processing is a traditional skill of farmers, and it’s being lost because these knowledge keepers are forced to outsource the work in order to stay legal, even while it costs them additional time and money. Licensed on-farm slaughter allows producers, instead, to share these skills with seasonal help and family members through an avenue that provides training and ensures that safety protocols are followed. This benefit will contribute to the skill set pro­vince­wide and will help to support employability at inspected facilities where a shortage of skilled employees is a major challenge.

Before Class E and D facilities were developed in 2010, there was a scientific study completed by the province whose purpose was to assess public health risk. Its outcome supported the rationale for class D and E licences. My understanding is that this document is in the hands of the meat inspection program. I don’t have access to it, personally, but I know people who have reviewed it.

I do want to speak to what I call the elephant in the room. That is the fear and assumption that class D and E licences will have a negative impact on existing A and B facilities. I understand that fear. I appreciate where it comes from. These facilities were forced to expend significant amounts of capital to upgrade when the regulations were imposed. They don’t want and they shouldn’t be subject to profit losses as a result of further changes. However, we can’t allow that sort of protectionism to disable development and growth of the community scale industries.

Furthermore, we don’t believe that we will undermine class A and B facilities to any large degree. There will remain a huge need for provincially inspected meat and pro­vince­wide sales avenues. One large beef farmer in the Alberni Valley sends his animals to Gunter Meats to be sold at Country Grocer. He would not change this arrangement should a class D facility become available in the region.

Existing facilities are, as you no doubt know, very busy and often unable to keep up with demand. Expansion of the capacity in smaller communities will stimulate overall production, as it was shown to have done on Saltspring Island, and support small producers to scale up over time.

To put the fear into perspective, as well, prior to the ACRD’s request for a designation, we spoke to representatives from both Gunter Meats here in Courtenay and Plecas Meats in Nanaimo. These are the two main facilities where Alberni producers go at present. A representative of Gunter noted no contention in allowing class D licences in the Alberni Valley.

As part of our conversations, Plecas Meats offered a snapshot of the processing they did for the Alberni producers in 2016. This was described as 125 rabbits, ten beef animals and ten hogs for a total of nine Alberni producers. Based on their pricing, it would have meant a total gross income to Plecas of approximately $3,000 over the year.

I have two further points. Firstly is to challenge the statement that I’ve heard repeatedly, which is that a class A or B facility can be constructed for not much more than a class D or E facility — potentially as little as $30,000. This confounds me, and it poses a number of questions. If this is so, then why are there no examples of successful projects like this being built from scratch being made available? What we know is that a class A facility built in Invermere recently cost about $800,000 and that the Saltspring facility was about $450,000 back in 2012.

The ACRD paid for a formal feasibility study that put the cost of a basic and small facility for us at about $550,000. A class B facility, while it would have been slightly less costly, would have been less feasible because it would have eliminated the potential profits from cut and wrap.

[4:15 p.m.]

If a class B facility, as claimed, can be built for less than 10 percent of these numbers, why is there so much concern and unrest about taking money or business away from the class As, who needed large expenditures in order to comply with regulations? Why were they given access to significant grant funding when the regulations were established?

Related to this same challenge about the costing, a challenge in my research processes has been in getting a clear understanding of the Ministry of Health’s overarching framework for class D and E licences. My understanding is that each region develops their own policies. I feel that a documented provincial framework which included opportunity for regional amendments where appropriate would be of assistance in generating clarity about the costs and requirements for potential applicants and other stakeholders.

The meat inspection agency states that they strive for an outcome approach rather than posing regulatory hurdles. Shouldn’t there be an intermediate option that will support small communities and act as a stepping stone to fully inspected facilities? Well, there is one. It’s called class D and E licences, and these are fully monitored. They’re subject to a regulatory framework and review from a provincial body. Why are these facilities not open for businesses within the Alberni-Clayoquot regional district or other non-designated areas?

We’ve committed to working with the province — the ACRD — to support the change and assist with any monitoring of the impact of a change in the regulations. We’ve had no clear channel for our requests, and that would be another recommendation, perhaps — that there’s some formal process for becoming designated. But I realize that there are challenges in having one region designated and setting a precedent. I really, again, appreciate the need for this review.

We hope that one of your recommendations will be that the province grants regional designation to the Alberni-Clayoquot regional district. We’re happy to work with the province to sort of run a pilot project and to monitor and help with generating research from that change.

R. Leonard (Chair): Thank you very much for that presentation. We now have five minutes to ask questions. So maybe we’ll get to the other points that you maybe didn’t get a chance to talk about.

N. Simons: Thank you very much, first of all. That’s a lot of information. I hope you’ll make sure you put it in writing, and we can look at it carefully.

My question is: who says that it’s, like, $30,000? Where is that repeated? I haven’t heard it, but I haven’t asked anybody.

H. Shobe: The $30,000 specifically was from someone in the meat inspection staff. That’s where I’ve heard that sort of: “Well, you know, if you’re going to do a D or an E, why not just apply for a B? It’s just a little tiny bit more. You could do it for $30,000.”

I did see a reference — I read the minutes — from Gavin Last and James Mack. There was some kind of reference to that — about there being a fine line between the cost of a D facility and the cost of a B facility. So I saw a reference there as well.

D. Routley: You mentioned the perceived distance limitation for class E, and I’m interested in that. I represent an area — Gabriola, for example — where the distance may not be great by kilometres or driving time, but with the ferry and time of day and whatnot, it’s a long way. Is that kind of what you meant?

[4:20 p.m.]

H. Shobe: Yeah. If you look at the class E feasibility study, it says it’s not likely if it’s within the two-hour driving time to a facility. If you look at the kilometres from Alberni Valley up to Gunter’s or down to Plecas’s as well, you could say you could drive that. In our study, we really expanded on some of the descriptions of the specific challenges we have as a region, including the mountain pass — very slow traffic, as you all know. It’s very different when you’re hauling a trailer full of livestock. Of course, some of our producers live way out further in the Alberni Valley. Then, of course, we also have the additional mountain pass going to the coastal communities, so that’s a challenge.

Another thing is that for our producers, it’s actually two round trips. You can’t just take your meat there, drop it off and pick it up later in the day. You actually have to go back and forth twice. We put some cost estimates into our paper, so I really hope that you look at that. It’s something like at least five hours of driving for each time, and then all the trailer costs.

D. Routley: Okay. Can I follow up?

R. Leonard (Chair): One follow-up, and then Donna.

D. Routley: I’m just thinking about how the driving time of a trip is not usually representative of the entirety of the trip, if you’re having aside a whole day for a two-hour driving time, versus someone in the Fraser Valley who drives two hours. It’s maybe part of a day, whereas for our more rural folks here, it’s a lot bigger.

H. Shobe: Absolutely. It also depends on the facilities you’re going to. These facilities — typically you have to have your animals there at 8 a.m. in the morning. You’re up very, very early, and you have to get your animals there and drop them off and take all the time for that.

Yes, it’s very different. It’s very contextual, and that’s where every regional district is different. My understanding from the procedure when they did the regional designations is that it was somewhat an arbitrary approach that they chose some regions. They established them, and that was kind of: “Let’s try these ones.” That hasn’t been reassessed until this very committee, where we’re hoping that you’ll have a look at those.

D. Routley: Thank you.

D. Barnett: Thank you very much for your presentation. Have you applied for designation, or are you looking forward to applying? When did you apply?

H. Shobe: To clarify, there isn’t really a process for applying, which makes it difficult. However, we did publish our report. You guys will have a copy of that electronically. I did submit it last week. That was in May of 2017.

What we did is we sent that report to people in the meat inspection agency, the Ministry of Agriculture. I’ve talked to the Minister of Agriculture herself. That report was our request for a designation. We’ve had a number of conversations since that but, again, no clear channel and no real follow up of late.

There’s no yes or no or any kind of….

I. Paton: If you had a D or E licence in Alberni Valley and you do the slaughtering in your facility on the farm, do you have a cut-and-wrap facility in Port Alberni, or would you have to bring it back up this way to get that done?

H. Shobe: There are cut-and-wrap facilities in the Alberni Valley. It’s absolutely correct, though, that that’s also a challenge, and it’s something that we’ll have to look at and work with along the way. There’s limited capacity in those cut-and-wrap facilities as well, so we’d likely need some expansion or some new facilities coming in or other methods to work with that.

The problem is that we can’t even begin to look for those without the ability to slaughter in the first place. We can’t start to build our industry when we don’t have the right the do any of it. We need to be designated so that we can start to do whatever we need to do — create the businesses, get funding for new opportunities, start some marketing chains. Then we can go ahead.

We can’t do anything right now while we sit in…. We’re just not allowed. Who’s going to start a business that’s illegal? There’s nothing we can do. We are stuck, and our producers are really suffering.

R. Leonard (Chair): Thank you very much. We appreciate your….

N. Simons: You make a very good case. Thank you very much. You did a good job.

R. Leonard (Chair): Yes, you’ve made a very impassioned case, and it was wonderful to have you as our first presenter.

H. Shobe: Thank you very much. I really appreciate the time. My email address and contact information are available in the paper, and I would welcome anybody to call me at any time. I’d be more than happy to speak with you further.

R. Leonard (Chair): Our next presenter is from Gunter Bros. Meat Co. It’s Sheldon Gunter, a familiar face.

GUNTER BROS. MEAT CO.

S. Gunter: Good afternoon. My name is Sheldon Gunter, and I’m here on behalf of Gunter Bros. Meat. I come from a long line of butchers and slaughter plant operators here within Canada and generations before that in England, actually. I work for my father, Dennis, and my uncle Harry. I work alongside my cousin Tyler as well.

Before Gunter Bros. became what it is now, my grandfather ran Gunter’s Meats, and before that, his father did slaughter and butchering for the local community. Our business is a multigenerational family business, and we’re proud to serve the local communities that we live and work within.

[4:25 p.m.]

We believe that it’s part of our social and economic re­spon­sibility to provide licensed and inspected slaughter services to the local farmers so they’re able to bring their products to market and make farming a viable career for them. Our relationships with these farmers are a symbiotic system. Their success allows for more local meat production, which in turn allows us to remain busy and continue to employ our staff. We employ local people — our family, friends, neighbours — and many of our staff have been working for us for over seven years.

Despite what some people believe, we really aren’t a large corporation or Wal-Mart-sized. Most of the meat plants in B.C., like us, employ less than 30 people. Almost every single abattoir in B.C. is a small to medium-sized, family-owned and -operated business.

Now, the question as to capacity. The biggest problem, when it comes to slaughter capacity, is seasonality. A huge majority of farmers are not finishing their animals throughout the year. Everyone wants to get their animals processed in the fall, and of course, you know what happens. Basically, we are completely full during the fall. Our plant operates at 50 percent of our capacity from mid-December to late August and then jumps up to over 100 percent capacity in the fall months.

We do, like most plants, experience some staff turnover and lower retention of staff when hours are cut down during the slow season. It makes it hard to keep the good staff and keep them trained regularly. If more farmers were willing to develop finishing schedules throughout the year, the work would be much more evenly dispersed throughout the year.

If the government had a farmers outreach program, such as extension services, to encourage and teach new farmers how to finish their animals, the quality of product and viability of increasing local meat production would be much higher. This would benefit everyone involved, from the farmer to the abattoir to the end consumer, who would be getting fresher meat on a more regular basis.

The second-biggest problem with slaughter capacity is cutting-and-wrapping capacity. Across B.C., we are exper­ienc­ing an industrywide shortage of skilled workers in the meat-processing sector, the highest demand being for trained meat cutters. If we could increase the number of trained meat cutters in B.C., then we would be able to increase the slaughter capacity in many areas.

There are a number of abattoirs that simply cannot book any more animals in for slaughter because they can’t keep up with the cutting and wrapping. Allowing for more D and E licensed but uninspected meat plants to open up will not help alleviate the capacity issues, as it won’t help with the cut-and-wrap portion.

Many years ago most farmers would take all or some of their animal carcasses out as slaughter-only, but nowadays, this is really rare. We usually do both the slaughter portion and the cutting-and-wrapping portion of processing. So even if we increase the number of animals slaughtered per day, the cutting and wrapping of the finished product needs to happen, and there are not enough people trained to do that.

A big misconception is the belief that opening up more room for class D and E licensed operations will help alleviate the capacity issues. This would end up having the exact opposite effect. If business is taken away from a class A or class B plant that is operating at the standard of inspection and then given to a permissive class D or class E plant that is uninspected, then the labour issues we are already dealing with will only get worse, because there won’t be enough work available to keep those skilled workers on payroll. Increasing the capacity at inspected meat plants by focusing on the cut-and-wrap portion will help with capacity issues and help provide stable jobs in the meat-processing sector.

[4:30 p.m.]

The current provincial meat inspection system in B.C. is broken. Provincially licensed plants are not under the same system. Class A and class B licensed plants are all inspected every single time that slaughter occurs at that plant. The inspectors are specifically trained in reviewing slaughter records, ensuring movement reporting, ear tag retirement, specified-risk-material removal, removal of contamination on the carcass, animal disease identification, premortem assessment of animals, antemortem inspection, adequate stunning and bleeding procedures, proper chilling of carcasses and more. These are very specific details of that job.

Class D and class E licensed plants are not inspected. There is no unbiased, non-partisan inspector on site during slaughter. The operators at these plants are expected to follow the regulations just as an inspected plant would, but there is literally no oversight to ensure that they are following the rules and keeping under the slaughtering limit that their licence allows. They are operating under the regional health authorities that that plant resides in. These health authorities do not have the expertise or the resources to oversee either slaughter or cut-and-wrap procedure. Cut-and-wrap is also part of their oversight for the cut-and-wrap licensed facilities.

I propose that the Ministry of Agriculture not only bring all classes of licences under the same system of inspected meat slaughter but also include the cut-and-wrap portion — facilities that are just doing the cut-and-wrap — so that it’s all under one system.

How is it that we are the only province in Canada that allows uninspected meat to be sold to restaurants, meat shops, farmers markets and at farm gates? All of us need to be assured that our meat production system is providing B.C. with safely and humanely produced meat. B.C. cannot afford to lose its reputation because of a food-borne outbreak. The ripple effects could be felt Canada-wide.

We need to ensure that meat that is not fit for human consumption be removed from the food chain. This could be harder for class D and E licensed plants, who have a vested interest in making money from the sale of an animal that may be condemned. Bringing the Class D and E licences up to the same standard as A or B licences is the answer to increasing local meat production.

All provincially licensed slaughter plants in B.C. need to be required, under the meat inspection regulation, to pro­vide annual proof of commercial insurance for slaughtering meat on the premises of their licensed meat plant. This must be provided to the Ministry of Agriculture as assurance that liability for such an industry is covered, especially given the inherent higher risks of doing uninspected slaughter for sale to the public with the D and E licences. The minimum required liability insurance should be $2 million. This proof of insurance should be required prior to opening a new slaughter plant of any class and annually as an industry standard.

Just to wind up, the biggest question to ask is: why do we have two systems of meat slaughter standards in this province, when the main difference between an A or B licence and a D or E licence is not financial? It is having a trained meat inspector on site to ensure the safety of our meat production system. Why can’t they be inspected?

R. Leonard (Chair): Thank you very much. I appreciate that.

Now, do we have any questions for Sheldon?

N. Simons: What evidence do you have of a higher risk from the small producers? What tangible evidence is there that the Ds and Es are a higher risk than the As and Bs?

[4:35 p.m.]

S. Gunter: I don’t have evidence on me, on hand. But I can tell you from personal experience, having a meat inspector on site…. He will see contamination and bruising or an animal that is not quite behaving properly prior to slaughter. He can identify those issues and remove them and remove it from the food chain, whereas someone who is not specifically trained, as the meat inspectors are, will not be able to identify those issues and remove them.

D. Barnett: Thank you very much for your presentation. It’s very interesting.

The one question I do have is the health authority. How often does the health authority inspect your facility?

S. Gunter: We’ve seen them once, about two years ago. They came to do a full inspection of the facility. She came by once several months ago just to stop in and talk a bit. She asked for an update on our food safety plan, because she hadn’t seen it in over a year. It’s rare, quite honestly. It’s very rare.

N. Simons: Can I just add something? I think Donna was asking…. That’s for a class A facility?

S. Gunter: That is.

N. Simons: The health authority, their authority is the facility itself….

D. Barnett: Yes, I understand completely. Thank you.

N. Simons: No, I wasn’t worried that you didn’t understand. I’m just making it clear, based on your comment, that when you’re talking about the Ds and Es…. My presumption is that the health authority is there more than once every two years. That’s all.

A Voice: Do we know how often they actually attend?

N. Simons: We’ll find out.

R. Leonard (Chair): It’s in that report that we just got.

Thank you very much, Sheldon. I really appreciate your presentation and your earlier tour.

S. Gunter: Yeah, I’m glad you guys got to see the facility.

R. Leonard (Chair): Okay. Our next presenter is District A Farmers Institute — Janet Thony.

DISTRICT A FARMERS INSTITUTE

J. Thony: Thank you for providing this opportunity for agriculturalists to share our thoughts with you.

Today I represent District A Farmers Institute, of which I’m the president, and Coombs Farmers Institute, of which I’m also the president. However, for many years — prior to my semi-retirement here, farming on Vancouver Island — I ranched in the Cariboo and know somewhat of Donna Barnett’s work to try and help Findlay Meats.

I was a founding member of the South Cariboo Meat Co-op, which is defunct now, so I’ve got a deep background in protein production, lived through the 2003 crisis and survived. I’ve been intimately connected to the process of trying to keep farmers and ranchers in business through this regulatory process.

A little bit of background. I’m going to speak a little bit more ideologically. There’s no point in talking, in a vacuum, about meat regulations if no one will come to the plate to produce meat. It’s not an isolated thing that creates a shortage and, therefore, food insecurity. I’m going to focus a lot of my comments there.

The introduction of the meat inspection regulations in 2004 was driven by the BSE crisis. This regulatory framework was developed primarily for the export market and caused significant subsequent damage to food and farming security. This regulatory system does not scale down to realistically govern small to medium-sized farms.

[4:40 p.m.]

BSE is caused by feeding animal parts to animals, not some­thing that small stockers do. All of Vancouver Island are small stockers.

Farmers have gone out of business or reluctantly chosen to operate under the regulatory radar. Livestock numbers have declined drastically. Barns, fields and pastures sit unused — all this at a time when the interest in and demand for locally produced food is strong and growing.

In 2006, there were 300 small slaughterhouses in B.C. By 2011, only 35 were left. The numbers have rebounded somewhat. There’s now, as I understand it, 61 licensed A and B plants in B.C., not talking about D and E licensing. But slaughter capacity in peak months is still short.

A combination of factors is at work here. Livestock numbers across all sectors have declined significantly over the last few decades. This is due only in part to the tighter regulations.

The following factors must also be addressed if protein production is to increase. The big one is feed costs. They’re driving livestock production off the Island. In the past — pre the loss of the Crow rate and the Canadian Wheat Board — regulated freight rates and rail service allowed for the efficient and economic movement of prairie grain.

Multilevel regulatory requirements — so provincial, regional, health authorities — create confusion and reluctance on the part of the farmer to navigate the red-tape aspect of farming.

Lack of slaughter capacity and shipping distances and difficulties create stock management problems.

Livestock versus wildlife conflict are daily concerns for livestock farmers, and fences and farmer vigilance are not enough to solve the problem.

A huge one is shortage of skilled farm labour, discouraging expansion. This is caused by the inability of the farmer to pay a decent wage to workers coupled with a general lack of interest in agriculture on the part of those seeking work.

Low return on farming investment — caused, in part, by the availability of inexpensive and convenient imported food — pushes the workforce to choose higher-paying professions. Increasingly, higher cost of land suitable for farming and lack of protection of ALR land shuts out most new entrants to agriculture. Farmers are aging out, with no incentives in sight for a younger generation of farmers to learn the necessary skills and take their place.

We suggest that addressing even one or two of these issues will alter perceptions of the value of entering agriculture as a profession.

Since 2006, many small-scale rural abattoirs ceased operations, unable or unwilling to upgrade to the new regulatory requirements. Larger-scale processing plants struggle to commit or support hefty economic investment for start-up and development or restructuring.

South Cariboo Meat Co-op, which I was directly involved with, in 100 Mile House and Northwest Premium Meat Co-op in Smithers are two examples. They no longer exist, and they used up massive amounts of MIES and MTAP money. It’s just down the tubes. It never accomplished a thing.

Cause of this situation? Livestock numbers are at an historic low. There simply is not sufficient volume of animals consigned to the plant to pay the bills, except in the peak slaughter months. This statistic is somewhat different regionally. It depends on where you are. Skilled, dependable labour is difficult to attract and retain and remains one of the main issues. Slaughter of most red meat livestock occurs in a very short time frame — October, November, December — creating staffing problems for the abattoir.

How can access to training be improved? Since 1990 — when the immense multinational Cargill plant in High River, Alberta, opened — meat processing has changed from a master butcher model to a minimum wage, high-stress, assembly line job. Olds College in Alberta is the only school in Canada offering animal processing — i.e., slaughter — and is one of only four or five left that teaches meat cutting. Workers simply cannot and will not entertain training for a position that pays minimum wage and is perceived as onerous when higher-paying jobs exist in other trades.

The 2016-2017 abattoir processor training program, hosted by the B.C. Association of Abattoirs and funded by the province — an excellent move — trained 20 new entrants to the industry. Although successful, it filled less than 10 percent of the reported shortage.

[4:45 p.m.]

We suggest that training programs of this type or SlaughterSafe or reverting to the old extension services that the Ministry of Agriculture used to offer, in the days of the Department of Agriculture, are absolutely necessary to provide the necessary staff for abattoirs, regardless of the size of the abattoir.

Realistic standards of food safety and humane treatment of livestock. Although the CFIA and both provincial and federal governments would have us believe that Canada “has the safest food system in the world” — that was Rona Ambrose — 78 percent of Canadians polled by Ipsos-Reid stated that they are concerned about the safety of the food that they eat. In the wake of the 2008 Maple Leaf listeria fiasco, the disastrous 2012 XL Foods E. coli event that resulted in a $4.4 million class action lawsuit, plus multiple other food recalls, these people may be justified.

Unrealistic line speeds, untrained and uninvested workers, multiple handlers of food product between farmer and consumer, and lax, double-standard and declining inspections caused by reduced funding are some of the issues.

Most small stockers don’t sell beyond their immediate neighbourhood. If a problem exists related to food safety, it remains small in impact and immediately traceable. Any time livestock is required to leave the farm and its familiar surroundings, stress exists, leading to a higher incidence of pathogen spread.

According to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, live animal transport is “ideally suited for spreading disease.” Add to this the Federation of Veterinarians of Europe declaration that this practice creates “serious animal and public health problems,” and one wonders why and how we ever thought that this was a good idea.

One hundred percent of the small farmers polled listed shipping their livestock to an abattoir as their No. 1 concern related to animal welfare. These issues don’t exist in a model based on small-scale farm-gate meat production.

R. Leonard (Chair): Just to let you know, you have another half a minute.

J. Thony: Okay.

We suggest that an expansion of D and E licences, coupled with the streamlining of licensing and inspection — we totally believe that these D and E plants have got to be inspected — will address all of these elements. Directly impacting the farmer….

I’d like to use my five minutes to continue with these last few points. Do I need to do the Q and A?

R. Leonard (Chair): Yeah, unless there are no questions. Then I’ll give you the five. But we should let the folks ask their questions, if they have any.

One question here from Mike.

M. Morris: Just curious. You mentioned earlier on…. Your top two choices for change — what would they be?

J. Thony: Most importantly, expand the regional availability of D and E licensing. Those farmers willing to shoulder the added cost and effort will do so. They should be supported financially — as were the other abattoirs, through MIES and MTAP — both through the development of their plants and throughout the learning curve.

The second one is to streamline and clarify the regulatory oversight. A government employee has stated to me that farm-gate sales suffer from legal grey areas. Having two separate bodies — regional health authorities and the provincial system — overseeing meat processing is confusing, prone to error, laborious and inefficient.

Those would be our top two recommendations. And training.

D. Barnett: I’d just like to thank you for all your work and bringing the issue to light in my region. We all did a lot of work together. We had some successes and some failures, and I just wanted to say thanks.

J. Thony: Thanks for what you did, Donna, in all those years.

R. Leonard (Chair): You still have a few more minutes if you have some other points you’d like to make, then.

J. Thony: Okay. The other one about regulatory oversight. We, on no level, recommend that D and E licensing…. Although we recommend expanding them, we completely believe that they’ve got to be regulated and inspected, whatever that mechanism is. But trying to scale down a regulatory framework that was developed for export market…. It just does not scale. So it’s got to be designed for small-scale production. Current policies do not scale down.

[4:50 p.m.]

The other thing we believe is happening is we have reached an uncomfortable level of fear-based oversight. This may be caused by regulatory policy being drafted by individuals who have a complete disconnect from agriculture and, therefore, food provenance. Just working with some of these people that have drafted some of these regulations that we try and work within, not understanding at all how a farm works, we believe, creates some problems. There have got to be some people that actually work in the industry that help draft these.

Training for all levels of meat producers and people working in the meat trade. We’ve completely lost the inherent skills that we had. I grew up with them — a lifelong agriculturalist — but most people don’t anymore.

R. Leonard (Chair): Thank you very much for your presentation.

Thanks to everybody else for their questions.

I’m glad that you were able to…. Oh, we have one more question for you. We still have time.

I. Paton: This is kind of hypothetical, but if you go to the northern part of the Island — say, up around Port Hardy or somewhere — and somebody said: “Okay, I want to put together a little facility with a D and E licence….” I totally agree that they need to be inspected by a provincial inspector. From a fiscal point of view, how many days a week would you need an inspector to drive from, say, Courtenay, which we saw at Gunter’s today, all the way to Port Hardy to do an inspection? Would that be cost-effective?

J. Thony: That question is posed thinking within the confines of the current system. We’re not suggesting that these inspectors would have to be through the ministry. People can be trained, and there already are people with excellent skill sets. Veterinarians, for instance, would be very able to identify health issues in a animal, pre-slaughter. They would be able to assess post-slaughter, looking at internal organs.

We believe that there is a way of creating an inspection system that has nothing to do with an inspector travelling over huge distances.

I. Paton: Okay, good point. Thanks.

J. Tegart (Deputy Chair): Thank you for your presentation. I think I heard you indicate that the training is out of Olds, Alberta. Within British Columbia, what kind of training is available?

J. Thony: I couldn’t find any evidence of it. That was a sound bite I pulled from the B.C. Association of Abattoirs final report that was just recently made available. It was actually a comment that I took from their document. The gal that presented for Gunter’s has also said the same thing. There just is not the training. There is not the staff available. I don’t know why there shouldn’t be. But if one doesn’t follow the economy and the politics of how we got to where we are today….

That’s why I mentioned the High River plant. The High River plant changed everything when they adopted their model of cutting costs to provide cheaper food, and that model just trickled down. They couldn’t get employees, because the people that would otherwise have gone to work in a plant went to work in the oil patch for $28 an hour instead of $7.50 an hour.

It’s not just what our slaughter capacity is. If we don’t address why people aren’t raising animals anymore…. Are they not because there’s no land base that they can afford? Do they not know how to farm? Do they not know how to create fields that feed? It’s not just a single-problem issue we’ve got at play here. If we don’t look at all the reasons why this isn’t working very well, that we’re loosing agricultural capacity, we’re not going to solve the problem.

R. Leonard (Chair): Okay. Well, thank you very much. Again, another impassioned presenter, very articulate.

Our next presenter is Island Pastures Beef Producers — Brad Chappell and Ben Vanderhorst.

[4:55 p.m.]

ISLAND PASTURES BEEF PRODUCERS

B. Vanderhorst: I will be by myself. I’m Ben. I got a text from Brad Chappell about 15 minutes ago saying that he’s preg-checking all his cows, and he’s not done. It’s just a farming issue, right?

R. Leonard (Chair): Welcome, Ben. I’m sure you will present the whole story very well.

B. Vanderhorst: I’ll do what I can.

I am on the executive of the Island Pastures Beef Association. We are the largest producer of beef for retail on Vancouver Island, between the ten members of our organization. All of our animals are processed through Gunter’s, here locally, and we have producers in the Alberni Valley, the Parksville area and the Comox Valley. A new producer just joined us from the Duncan area as well. We’re trying very much to enable beef producers to access retail markets. Our product is sold in grocery stores on Vancouver Island.

The comments that I will be making are related to that. I’m also the president of the Comox Valley Farmers Institute. Some of the issues that I discuss here are issues that have been broadly discussed in our organization.

There are lots of matters to discuss, but I wanted to specifically talk about the production of beef. The first question was related to livestock production in B.C. and what we can do to improve that. Some comments about financing and livestock identification. And some comments about the slaughter and plant licensing. A number of those things have already been discussed by other people. I’ll try not to overlap too much.

Because we’re on Vancouver Island, I will limit most of my comments to the Vancouver Island situation. For example, the question about the federal inspection of meat plants is probably much more germane to the Interior of B.C. than it would be on Vancouver Island.

The last time I heard a number, there were something like 5,500 beef carcasses per year imported to Vancouver Island. These are boxed beef or in some other form. We market between six and ten animals per week through our organization. So as you can see, there’s lots of room for expansion of the beef industry on Vancouver Island. I actually think I might have said that wrong. It’s 55,000 — the last number I heard in terms of animals consumed on the Island, most of which come from off the Island.

In terms of production, we’re seeing significant changes in Vancouver Island agriculture. It started some years ago when the dairy farming industry started consolidating. They needed to get larger in order to survive. Then they found that it was difficult surviving anyway, even when they were larger. The dairy industry in the Comox Valley, for example…. Where we had 30-some producers in the ’70s, we’re down to about eight or nine. Some of the people who leave the industry go into other types of farming, like livestock production or vegetables or fruit. Many went to livestock, and some of those people are still in the industry on a smaller scale.

The issue on Vancouver Island is that farm land is actually quite costly. It costs a lot to purchase farm land, so if you don’t have the land in your family, to actually expand into buying land base for farming becomes a very difficult issue. If a new entrant carries financing on a farm, then they have problems with actual costs of inventory, farm inputs and, generally, any other expense that involves moving goods back and forth to and from the Island. For most of our costs for items brought in — grain, fertilizer, livestock — from elsewhere, we pay significantly more here on the Island. So we have some structural issues that are really in the way of agriculture.

One of them is that, in fact, we are not in an inspected area. Livestock inspection does not occur here — similarly, in the Fraser Valley. There have been proposals and discussion over the last three years about that changing — the possibility of having an inspected area so that you have brand inspectors who can identify cattle. That, we believe, is one of the things that we don’t have on the Island that is holding back the livestock industry.

[5:00 p.m.]

If you’re able to identify the livestock, then you can access breeder and feeder financing programs that are available to everybody else in B.C. and other provinces and are not available here on the Island because we don’t have brand inspectors, and we don’t have a closed inspection area.

Banks don’t like to finance inventory; banks don’t like to finance livestock. So if you’re carrying a lot of debt trying to operate a farm and you also have to carry the debt on the livestock, you’re at a significant disadvantage.

In other parts of the province, producers can access financing through feeder and breeder associations, and we think that that is one of the things that needs to be addressed here if we want to see this industry grow. We believe the beef industry has to grow in order to justify increasing the slaughter capacity.

You heard Sheldon Gunter talk about their reality. Small producers all want their animals run through the program at the same time in the slaughter plant. We ship between six and ten a week on a year-round basis. We have that booked, and our animals are processed in a timely manner because of that. If we were able to increase the number of farms that can finance cattle through breeder-feeder associations, for example, I think we would see more livestock on Vancouver Island, and we would be able to raise more. We have the land base; we have the interest. The cost of doing that is the real issue.

Processing. As was said, the problem isn’t capacity; it’s timing for the local abattoir. We do believe that increasing slaughter capacity would occur if there was more livestock available for slaughter. Right now, and you’ve heard it from the abattoir on the Island, that’s not the case. We are also, as a group, concerned about not reducing the health and ag inspections on livestock sold for public consumption.

There’s a debate going on here about what types of licences should be available. We believe that whatever licences are out there and whatever the structure is for licensing, it needs to apply to all animals that are sold to the public. Be that through a farmers market, be that through farm gate or be that through retail, as we do, we believe that the inspection process has to occur, both Health and Agriculture sides of that. As was mentioned before, it’s not very scalable, but something needs to be done to allow that to occur.

If you think back to what BSE did to the industry and to consumer confidence in the safety of the food chain, we can’t risk not having that level of inspection for public-consumption products. We would jeopardize the entire industry if lower standards resulted in outbreaks of E. coli or whatever other things that have been out there. The health concerns certainly outweigh the capacity issues. We think that’s very important, and we certainly wouldn’t want to see any changes occur to that part of the equation.

That’s all we really wanted to say. We wanted to bring those three issues forward.

R. Leonard (Chair): Okay. Well, you’ve left lots of time for questions. I have a question, but I’ll save it till we’ve heard from others.

N. Simons: Thank you very much for your presentation. You mentioned that you believe there should be a standard licensing process for all producers if they sell to the public.

Interjection.

N. Simons: Standard inspections. Do you think that the current system — where meat is sold internationally, nationally, provincially or locally — should all have the same inspection standards?

B. Vanderhorst: Well, I understand that federally inspected plants have a different standard. Certainly, from a Vancouver Island perspective, that’s really not an issue. We don’t have the stock to do export. I think that’s a question, related to the federal, that you’re going to hear a lot more about in the Interior.

I do believe that certainly, for…. Why would there be a difference in standard between what we are prepared to consume ourselves and what we are prepared to export? I don’t understand why there would be a difference. The standard is the standard.

[5:05 p.m.]

N. Simons: Just as a follow-up. I asked this earlier. Are you aware of any situations where the small-scale processing has caused a health problem?

B. Vanderhorst: I’m not. We don’t use small-scale processing, so I’m not familiar with that.

D. Routley: Thanks for your presentation. Just out of interest, who’s the Duncan-area member that’s just come on?

B. Vanderhorst: It was a former dairy farmer. I’m sorry. I’m the worst guy in the world with names.

D. Routley: You and Sheldon both mentioned the finishing schedule, as did a couple of the other people, and how all the producers want to finish in the same time of year and that capacity would probably be adequate if it were more levelled out through the year.

How do we achieve that? What are the economic advantages to the producer to do that? What incentives could you suggest that would flatten that out a bit?

B. Vanderhorst: Well, it’s interesting. It depends a lot on what you’re doing in terms of your agricultural practice — your calving interval, when you calve. Most cattle finish in the 16- to 20-month age bracket. If you want to finish your cattle in the spring, maybe you could move to a different calving interval. If you want to finish them in the fall, like people do now, then they calve in the early part of the year. So you could move the calving interval around.

On Vancouver Island, we have a pretty mild climate. There certainly are people who’ve done that and moved to fall calving. Their cattle will finish at different times than, say, the people who are calving in the spring.

D. Routley: Maybe Sheldon could answer this from the back. Have any of the processors offered cost incentives to get producers to move the production? No? Couldn’t afford to.

S. Gunter: We really couldn’t afford to offer that. It wouldn’t be viable.

D. Routley: Then as a follow-up…. I’ve mixed up the order here, and everybody’s threatening to throw stuff at me.

R. Leonard (Chair): You get one more question, Doug, and then I’ll go on to Donna.

D. Routley: What can either of you suggest that could be offered or put in front of producers that would incent them to change their schedule? What could we do?

S. Gunter: Honestly, some form of extension services or farmer support. I don’t think that if there is information from the government out there right now, people are finding it, really — new farmers. When we see people, a lot of new farmers are kind of in the dark. We guide them through a lot of the process and how processing works and explain a lot of it. I think that maybe the abattoirs could help. If the government had such services, we could provide farmers with a link to it, or we could be that middle person to show them where to go to for those supports so that they have better guidance.

It’s hard to be a new farmer. You’re learning a lot on the go.

H. Shobe: It’s Heather Shobe. I was invited up, with a comment.

I’d just like to speak again to the scalability. One of the problems is that in the Alberni-Clayoquot, these are small producers. These are not large, established businesses who have larger herds of cattle, necessarily, that are selling it to grocery chains. These are people who are likely feeding their animals on grass.

Grass grows at certain times of the year. They can’t fatten up an animal and have it ready, at a suitable weight, in July. If they need to wait until November or December or January, then there’s no grass, and they’re starting to feed hay, which increases their costs again.

I want to look at the reality of the ecological system. This is why we have the high need in the fall, and that’s not something that smaller producers, in communities like the Alberni-Clayoquot, can necessarily do anything about. Some amount of education will help, absolutely. But it’s very difficult, especially for small and start-up growers. They need help to get to the point where they’re scalable.

Thank you for your time.

[5:10 p.m.]

R. Leonard (Chair): Okay. Thanks. We’re not going to get into a debate here now. Thank you for coming up and helping Ben. We have another question.

D. Barnett: Thank you for your presentation. It was earlier suggested that for meat inspection, possibly veterinarians could do it at slaughter time in these small, remote communities. How would your organization feel about that?

B. Vanderhorst: If the vet understood the large animal practice…. In the Comox Valley, for example, we have one vet that does large animal practice, and all the rest of the vets do small animals. Now, would they be prepared and willing to put their professional opinion on the line in terms of looking at a beef carcass to see whether there were issues with it? I’m not so sure. You could probably find some vets who would do that. But I’m not sure it’s…. I wouldn’t want to hang my hat on that as the solution.

R. Leonard (Chair): Okay. One more question, Donna.

D. Barnett: They would have to be qualified and be approved by the federal government — same inspection program.

B. Vanderhorst: If that was the case, yes. I wouldn’t have a problem with that.

R. Leonard (Chair): All right. Thank you very much. We’re starting to get a little behind time, but I appreciate the comments that you’ve brought to the table and everybody else’s contributions.

Next on the agenda we have Tannadice Farms Ltd. — Allen McWilliam. All right. You may begin.

TANNADICE FARMS

A. McWilliam: Madam Chairperson, members of the committee, by way of self-introduction, my name is Allen McWilliam. My wife, Heather, and I own Tannadice Farms, located in the Comox Valley. We produce pork and beef for local market. Our market area is Vancouver Island and the Gulf Islands.

All our meat products are processed by Gunter Bros. in the Courtenay area, except we also do a few chickens, which we take to Port Alberni for processing. We do not sell pigs or cattle. We sell pork and beef. We consider ourselves very fortunate to have a facility such as Gunter’s on Vancouver Island.

Our situation, just to explain it, is that we started farming over 40 years ago, and there was no inspection in this area until 2007. For some reason, most of Vancouver Island was exempt from inspection. I could never understand how the B.C. government could deem that we on Vancouver Island were not worthy of a basic health provision such as meat inspection, but that’s how it was.

Before 2007, we were able to sell our meat products to a very restricted list of small shops and restaurants that would accept non-inspected meats. When we approached a potential new customer, we would go through our sales spiel explaining how we raised our animals and how we were local, etc., and all the good things about our product.

In the end, we would have to tell them that there was just one additional factor that they would have to be aware of: our meat was not inspected. Any enthusiasm the potential customer may have been showing to that point immediately evaporated. How can you expect them to purchase non-inspected meat? They would be exposing themselves to a huge potential liability should something go wrong.

After meat inspection was introduced, we didn’t have this problem when approaching potential customers. Now we knew we had a superior meat product that was inspected the same as any other meat products available. It put us on level playing field.

Before 2007, our farm was profitable but not what I would call a viable business. I worked on the farm part-time and part-time in town as an accountant. Heather worked part-time on the farm, and we had one full-time employee that earned not much more than minimum wage at that time.

We now have two full-time employees that receive what I consider a living wage. I work full-time on the farm, to the extent my age allows, and Heather is retired from the farm. I feel, now, that we have a very viable business.

The indirect economic spinoff from our farm business and others like ours…. We’re not alone. There are lots out there that are doing the same thing as we are since inspection has come in.

Our largest cost is processing — harvesting the animals, breaking the carcasses, processing and packaging various cuts of meat, sausage-making, smoking bacon and hams, etc. The processing is very labour intensive.

Our business is year-round. We process pigs every week. This gives work to Gunter’s year-round so that they’re not laying off key employees in seasonally slow times.

[5:15 p.m.]

Our feed purchases are our second biggest expense. Our feed all comes from Vancouver Island.

To summarize our situation, we have built a very good business where we have been able to create a successful brand that is well accepted in our market area, and we are making a significant contribution to the local economy.

One of the main underpinnings of our business is that the public knows our meat is safe to eat. If the government of B.C. now allows meat products from some small producers to be introduced to the market that are not inspected, how does that affect the perception of the safety of the meat products we sell? Will the public think that because Tannadice Farms is a small producer, then their meat products must be processed without inspection or inspected to some lesser level? If there should be a problem generated by one of the non-inspected processors and the media became aware of it, then the consuming public would have no confidence in any meat produced on small farms.

Another point that I would like to make is the animal welfare issue, which is very important to us. Another issue to consider. Having an independent third party checking animals delivered for processing is an important step in assuring the public that the meat they eat comes from animals that are treated properly while alive and processed in a humane way. I stress the “processed in a humane way.”

In conclusion, I urge you to consider carefully the issue before you and to act in the best interests of the public with regards to meat inspection.

R. Leonard (Chair): Thank you very much. Short and sweet and time for questions. Anybody have any questions?

Some people may have had some of your product today at lunch.

N. Simons: I have a question. We hear a lot about this: the importance of ensuring that the public is confident with the food that they eat wherever they are and what have you.

I know that in 2007, that was the argument that the deputy minister was making going around the province. He was using an example. It was a fictitious example but one that indicated the possibility of harm from eating improperly processed…. In his case, runner beans, in fact, was the example that he was using.

He pointed out that people are concerned, obviously, about the safety of their food and then spoke to some statistics that, on average, every year about 15 people in this country die from food-borne illnesses — approximately 15 people in the entire country. I’m presuming, for the most part, that it’s seniors with immunity issues.

I’m just wondering. Do you know of any circumstances of the small producer who’s processing the meat on their farm that have resulted in negative health effects?

A. McWilliam: No, I do not. I would not have that information.

R. Leonard (Chair): Does anybody else have a question? Maybe I’ll ask you this, since I didn’t get to ask my….

Oh, Ian.

I. Paton: I guess two quick questions. When you ship your cattle or your hogs to Gunter’s, do they package it under Tannadice?

A. McWilliam: Yes, everything is done under the Tannadice brand.

I. Paton: So you sell retail locally under the packaging of Tannadice?

A. McWilliam: We sell very little retail. It’s a very small part of our business. We sell off the farm. My wife has a very small, little shop there, which also doubles as our garage. Most of our products are sold to other retailers — examples, small chain grocery stores and small meat shops and a few restaurants.

Vancouver Island is blessed with having lots of independent grocers, and each of them is trying to differentiate themselves somewhat, and we are there to help them do that.

I. Paton: My other question. It would probably be best if we had an inspector in the room, but as a dairy farmer, every time our milk got picked up every second day, it got tested, before it went to the plant, for antibiotics. We all know we have to treat cattle from time to time for foot rot or whatever the problem might be. When they go to an inspected facility, how do they do the testing nowadays for antibiotics that might be in the meat if somebody shipped a steer too soon after treatment?

A. McWilliam: I’m not sure exactly what the practice is. I understand it’s on a random basis or on a basis where if they have suspicions, they can tell the needle marks, basically, or bruising from needles. I think they may be testing those. That’s my understanding.

[5:20 p.m.]

Also, you have to realize that we and most small producers are under some sort of program. For example, for our pork, we’re part of the Canadian quality assurance. We try not to use medications, but when we do, we have to record them, we have to identify the animal, etc., etc. No animal leaves our place without going through the proper withdrawal periods.

R. Leonard (Chair): I’m going to ask my question now. Do you consider yourself a small-scale farmer?

A. McWilliam: Yes.

R. Leonard (Chair): Do you see that there is a difference in terms of risk, in terms of the livestock and the processing, versus large-scale? There were comments that were made around the BSE outbreak, which facilitated the big changes in inspection. I’m just wondering if that’s your experience as a small-scale operator — whether the risks are less or more.

A. McWilliam: It puzzled me that when Maple Leaf had all the problems, someone in Lake Cowichan could get sick from meat processed in Toronto. To me, that was an aha moment of: “Gee, what are we doing with our food?”

I guess as a general comment, I think we have too much central processing. But that’s a personal opinion.

R. Leonard (Chair): I think I heard the telephone ring, so we have another presenter. Thank you so much for your presentation and answering our questions.

We have on the telephone now our next presenter, who is Blake Goddard. My question is: where are we hearing from you from?

B. Goddard: Hi there. My name is Blake Goddard. I’m from Prince George.

R. Leonard (Chair): Welcome. I’m going to say…. You called in, so you probably didn’t hear my words of wisdom at the beginning of the evening.

B. Goddard: I did not. I apologize.

R. Leonard (Chair): You have ten minutes to present, and then the members of the committee have a further five minutes to ask you questions. If you want to get started, we’ll start the timer.

BLAKE GODDARD

B. Goddard: I was asked to call in by my cattlemen’s association regarding just general input. My background in farming is limited. I am a relatively new producer. This is actually our first year on our own farm. We did farm share.

If I had to say some of the difficulties that I’m coming up with, it’s the processing — that being the lack of facilities and/or, when it’s prime slaughter time, the inability to get into those facilities. For instance, Prince George has one red meat facility, and we have no poultry facilities. Quesnel has now closed down their poultry facility. Dawson Creek also had to shut down theirs. The only one is in Vanderhoof.

The problem that I’m seeing is not necessarily for the poultry, because they’re closing down. The problem I’m seeing is that there’s a lack of people raising their own animals because of, I think, the red tape and the costs and the transporting. When I have to transport my birds all the way to Vanderhoof and back…. You essentially have to pay fees that would potentially be cheaper if there were more competition. But that would be more for the red meat style. We are talking about a packing plant coming to Prince George, which I think would be great for the industry.

I don’t really like the protections that the processing plants receive. I don’t think it creates fair business for everybody.

Then the next side that I sometimes wonder about is the quota system, when they want you to have quota on X amount of birds. I’m not there to raise that amount yet, but I’m working towards that. I don’t really understand why we are having these quotas when we’re still importing birds from outside of British Columbia. That would mean that we’re clearly not meeting market demand as it is, yet we’re still protecting the large-scale growers, which is often the case in everything.

[5:25 p.m.]

We protect the large guys in processing, in raising, in all aspects of the farming. Then the small guys have what seems to be more red tape or struggles because they either can’t afford the systems that are put in place or they can’t deal with the time that it takes to get through the system as well as work the farm and raise the animals.

Being a new farmer, I also have found it very, very difficult working with the information and the educating that the government provides in what we have to work with. I think we really need to be pushing youth to get into farming so we’re not reliant on two or three producers, because all we’re seeing is farms getting bigger and bigger, by super-entities versus people farming in their communities and growing for their communities.

I don’t think that’s a sustainable or a viable system for the health of people when we’re taking food from our local areas and we’re not doing it anymore. Then we’re trucking it to a processing plant in Alberta or all the way to Washington, and then we have to bring it all the way back. It doesn’t make much sense, in my opinion.

I didn’t really prepare a great big statement for you guys. These are problems that I’m struggling with now. I would like to see the system streamlined. I would also like to see an emphasis put on making it not necessarily easier, but a better system for people that want to get into farming and try to raise food for profit to sell in their communities. I think it should somehow be encouraged more. I don’t know how it could be rewarded or not be rewarded, but it needs to be a system where we can compete in some aspect with the monster companies.

I don’t know that I have a whole bunch more issues that I’m working with right now.

R. Leonard (Chair): Thank you for your presentation. It’s very different for us on this end too. We’re looking at a microphone that looks sort of like a black head. We have some questions for you. Here is Rachna.

R. Singh: Thank you, Blake. That was a really good presentation. You mentioned some concerns about processing and being a small farmer. Where do you go for processing your animals?

B. Goddard: I essentially have two options. One is in Prince George; that’s Kawano Farms. Because they’re the only one, they’re often very booked up, especially if you want to slaughter in the prime times, like the fall. The chances of getting in there are next to none. The other one is trucking my animals to Vanderhoof. Those are really the only ones that I would consider, because if you have to truck animals further, you get lost. You get all sorts of other issues. You incur a bunch of extra costs in travel and trailers and everything.

I called today, actually, to try to find slaughter dates. I could get in, in July, because not many people slaughter in July. But if I wanted to get in, in October, there’s no way I’ll get in.

M. Morris: Hi, Blake. Mike Morris from Prince George. Are you strictly on the chicken side, the bird side, or are you mixed farming with cattle or hogs as well?

B. Goddard: I do chickens, turkeys, honey. Right now I have cattle, and because we’re a new farm, we’ll roll into pork and goats next year. I didn’t want to rush it this year on that side of things.

M. Morris: Good. Thanks. Pop in and see me sometime.

B. Goddard: Sure.

D. Barnett: Donna Barnett here from the Cariboo-Chilcotin. You’re talking about protectionism. Can you explain that a little more?

B. Goddard: In the sense of how the big producers…. Let’s look at something like the turkey board, for instance.

[5:30 p.m.]

They get to make decisions on quotas and the rules governing how many chickens or turkeys you could grow, right? But why do we need that? In the real world, the market would dictate. If we had too many turkeys out there, people would stop raising them. I think, with a small fee, I can do up to 300 turkeys, and after that, you have to go into quota. Or the standard is 50, so I could only do 50 birds without getting any fee. Or I can try to get into quota, but being a small farmer, the quota fees are quite expensive, to buy quota.

When I say these guys are protected, well, they are protected, because I can’t farm as what the market would say. We’re still importing birds from all over the place. So I don’t feel like we’re stepping on these producers’ toes. If I start growing more turkeys in my yard and I’m selling them locally, I don’t feel like that’s putting them out of business.

D. Barnett: If I may just ask one more question. Over 300 birds, you have to buy quota. Do you have to buy somebody else’s quota, or is that from the government?

B. Goddard: Yes, essentially there’s no more quota. There is, right now, an application for a 17,500 kilogram quota if you want to do organic turkey. That’s an application. You put your process in, and you might get that. Clearly, they’ve seen an opening for market in organic turkey, which is…. I can’t say that I’d raise fully organic, because we actually don’t have a store in Prince George that sells 100 percent organic feed. I do pasture-raise all my animals. I have no cages on my farm.

That is what happens. Yes, I would have to get quota. To my understanding, as it is right now, the quotas out there — that’s it. So you would have to buy somebody else’s quota.

R. Leonard (Chair): Any other questions?

I have sort of a personal question. What got you into farming, as a new farmer?

B. Goddard: It’s always been a dream of mine. I’m from Prince George, but we were down in Squamish, where we were living. We moved back here, and we found a farm-share, which was a great opportunity to start on a farm without putting in the infrastructure. We were able to work on that farm, and we got a feel for what we liked and didn’t like. Then we bought our own piece of land. Now we’ve built our house, and we’re out here and doing our thing.

I just think it’s a great…. I guess I just love it. I don’t know how to explain it. I think it’s a quality lifestyle where you can wake up and you can go and do your own thing right on your own land.

It is very tricky. I’ll tell you. I call myself a YouTube farmer, because that’s the only way you can really learn now. It seems like when I go to a farm convention, everybody’s 70 years old. Everybody talks about: “Oh, don’t farm. Don’t do that.” I think we need to be working on our education with young farmers and trying to prop it up so that we’re not stuck with just massive farms, where it’s a great big company and they can just have hundreds of thousands of acres to produce.

R. Leonard (Chair): Okay, thanks. I actually have three more questions.

J. Tegart (Deputy Chair): Thanks very much for your presentation, Blake. I live in Ashcroft, and it’s interesting to me to hear you talk about farm-share and the interest that that gave you. Probably farming is in your blood. It is a lifestyle.

We’ve had some conversation in the room today about encouraging young people to get into farming. Is there any advice that you could give this committee that may help us in a recommendation that talks about some of the challenges? I mean, we’re certainly looking at abattoirs, but we have a bigger mandate than that. Do you have any advice for us in regards to attracting people who have farming in their blood but really believe they can’t afford to do it?

B. Goddard: Right. There are numerous things people can do. Either a farm share…. We went out and we worked on a farm. There are also tracts of land everywhere, so you can lease or rent land, which is what a lot of…. I read a lot of books on how to get into that.

[5:35 p.m.]

Even with that, if you find land, there are so many costs to buying your herd, and then you have to have water and fencing. There are many, many things that come up. I would like to see it getting more…. You never really hear about it in school, and when I was younger, we didn’t go out to, really, farm trips, like actual working farms where you could see and get a feel for what happens. It’s sort of always just pushed in the background.

I know I did have some courses down on the Sunshine Coast. Now those schools are actually doing some really cool…. It’s permaculture, but they’re doing these in the schools, where they’re getting the kids involved in designing landscapes and growing food for us and doing also sorts of different things like that.

This could be happening at every school and any school, but it’s only happening at a select few. That’s something that I aim to do on this farm as well: to become a permaculture teaching farm where people can come. But I would love to be able to get into the school system and introduce them, because so few people ever have access to a farm or they don’t know that they have access to a farm.

R. Leonard (Chair): Last question on the block for Mr. Goddard.

I. Paton: Thank you, Blake. Just an FYI. I believe the provincial government made an announcement about two weeks ago of $450,000 towards a consultation process for a class A licence processing plant in Prince George.

B. Goddard: Right. I think we’re on year 2 or 3 working on that, and I sure hope it goes through. There are obviously lots of issues that they have to…. Originally, I heard it was about the bedding and then about the grain and feed and all the different systems. I think that would be an absolutely unreal thing to happen here for all of the farmers that are raising and then the job creation.

They say 60 to 100 jobs just in the plant. As well, if you think of all the offshoots of that — from all of the trucking to refrigeration mechanics, millwrights, everything that goes along with it — I really, really hope that this goes through and that we don’t have to send our beef to Alberta or Washington anymore.

R. Leonard (Chair): Thank you very much for calling in and being our first teleconference presenter. Have a good evening.

Our next presenter is Jacques Campbell.

JACQUES CAMPBELL

J. Campbell: I was going to phone in, but I came instead. I got up at five o’clock this morning so that I could get here.

R. Leonard (Chair): Oh my goodness. Where are you coming from?

J. Campbell: Saturna Island. I was supposed to be at the Saanich one. I don’t know if you have a copy of my thing, but I’m going to skip through some things because it takes awhile.

I guess I’m puzzled. I don’t know what small scale is. If the idea is to increase production in B.C. and to expand it by encouraging small-scale operators to produce for their local communities, why would the solution be to lower the standard? That’s just increasing the risk.

I have a small-scale abattoir, and I’m an A licence. I live on Saturna Island, population 350. My maternal grandfather purchased the property in the ’30s. My parents moved there in the ’40s, and I grew up there. They built a tiny slaughterhouse, and because we were very isolated on Saturna, we had to go in and out by boat all the time. Livestock seemed to be the only option because it did go in and out by boat. In the late ’50s, they upgraded to a modest abattoir.

I was raised on Saturna. After high school, I left and did what young people do for ten years, whatever that is, and then I took the agricultural program at Northern Lights College. That was two winter sessions. I returned home in 1980, and I’ve been on the family farm ever since. I farm full-time, and I have ever since I got there, running the abattoir and our farm.

We have a small herd of cattle — just 12 cows, with yearlings, calves and a bull — and we have about 100 ewes, lambs and a variety of rams. We process all of our own livestock and, since we got the licence, livestock from some other local farms.

[5:40 p.m.]

In 2007, when the new regulations were being enforced, we set about to upgrade our existing facility. The challenge at first was it was hard to know why the upgrades were required. At the public meetings, we were told there should be no small facilities. As time passed, small facilities were to be considered.

My father argued that at that time there were no diseases in B.C. that were harmful to anyone, and nobody disputed that. I remember, as a small girl, the veterinarians coming, and they would be testing our cows for TB and, I presume, brucellosis. Then they were eradicated from the province. Now they’re back. These are diseases we have to be concerned about, and people don’t always know how to recognize them.

Our facility is very small. I don’t know if you have a copy of my thing in front of you. I gave you a little layout of what our slaughterhouse looks like. I had to do that to get the initial funding to draw that beautiful picture. The kill floor is 12 by 13, the cutting area is 10 by 14, and the walk-in cooler is 7 by 10. Most people’s bedrooms are bigger than our kill floor.

Fortunately for us, the province was willing to invest in our industry, so we were able to make the upgrades and qualify for an A licence. However, in addition to the physical upgrades, I was also required to take a five-day FoodSafe course. That meant I had to leave home for five or six days in order to do that.

We made those upgrades. Fortunately, there has been more funding opportunities, and we’ve been able to make further upgrades. I think it’s really important to keep up to date.

The number of livestock we processed last year. From Saturna Island, 112 lambs, 14 beef and six mutton. From the neighbouring Gulf Islands — which we didn’t do before we had an A licence, but we can do them now — we did 79 lambs, three beef and three mutton.

We have a very short time with the inspector. We’re scheduled on Friday mornings between 6:30, if the ferry gets in on time, and when he has to leave at ten to go out. This is very good. It works really well for us. For some reason, they don’t mind getting up at three in the morning.

We had several inspectors over the time. They’re very professional about their job, they’re informative, and they’ll often give a hand or friendly advice. The inspection has brought good things to our tiny abattoir.

Firstly, the inspector checks to ensure the livestock is mobile and alert and healthy. While I’m quite confident I could do that job, a second opinion is always welcome when dealing with custom-slaughter livestock. Next he oversees the slaughter procedures, starting with the kill, and then to ensure effective processing of the carcass, he completes a review of all the organs and glands. The inspector’s presence also helps me enforce the sanitary practices in our facility, because anything done sloppy just holds up production.

The schedule of having the inspector on certain days ensures that we make the best use of our time, and we’ve become much more efficient. We also do cut-and-wrap.

With the third-party inspection, I can make sales far beyond the farm gate. I can sell to the local store and restaurant, and they can be confident they’re reselling or serving a safe and high-quality product.

I told you how small our abattoir was. Well, Cargill in Alberta processes 25,000 units in three weeks. That’s what B.C. does in a year. Most of it, 83 percent, is done by four abattoirs, and the rest divided out would be about 73 units. Well, I do the equivalent of 35 units. So I’m pretty sure I’m small-scale.

Our family has been in the business for over 60 years. It’s small but sustaining. There’s no off-farm job to supplement our existence. We’ve always provided a good product, even before we were licensed, so that made the transition very easy.

Why should we care about safety? Is it Big Brother that tells us what’s safe and what’s not safe? Safety and risks are related. Of course, I learned that in my FoodSafe course. The decisions of an individual have consequences, but the risk has to be weighed.

Currently the province has established criteria that require a third-party examination to ensure the public who buy beef or lamb from me is safe, and that’s it. So why would you want to support a system that leaves the consumer with a guessing game?

[5:45 p.m.]

There’s no question there’s a possibility that Ds and Es have superior processing plants to some of the As or Bs. They may very well produce a high-quality product. So why not be inspected?

There is a difference when an individual takes a risk pertaining to his or her own safety or when you expose others to that risk. One has to be responsible for the consequences. Fortunately, we have a third-party trained person on the site.

I think that they’ve done a good job in training the in­spectors. Unfortunately in other areas, it’s a different government body that oversees. It’s the environmental health inspectors, who are not trained in animal handling and do not attend processing to ensure safe, clean practices. So that’s a concern to me.

I would suggest that reducing the standards for meat inspection is not like reducing other safety requirements. Maybe people in outlying areas — more than a two-hour drive from a major centre — don’t have to use baby seats. Maybe they don’t need to use seatbelts. Maybe they don’t need to have their water sampled or wear bike helmets. Why do we care about safety? Why do we have regulations in the first place?

For Ds and Es to exist, the province has put their operators on the honour system. As we all know, that can be very positive or equally negative, as individuals are not infallible, and situations arise when we just might make an inappropriate decision. How does a consumer find out who the D and E licences are?

Why does a province want a two-tier system — two different ministries governing the meat industry at two different standards? It probably costs more. I don’t know.

What if somebody were to get sick or die — I think that’s unlikely — from meat processed in a D or an E? They’re fully licensed by the province, so it must be the province accepting that risk because they’ve agreed to a lesser standard. How would you be able to trace or do a recall?

Let me ask you this. I went to B.C. Beef Day outside the Legislature a few weeks ago. Would you have served meat from an uninspected processor? Would you have done that and exposed all those people to uninspected meat? You have to ask yourself that.

R. Leonard (Chair): Just to let you know, you have about half a minute or so.

J. Campbell: Half a minute. Okay. Well, I want to know who’s responsible for traceability regarding things like TB and brucellosis and how lowering the standard is going to improve our international trade.

Here’s what I think can make it a more serviceable system. Equal standards for the outcomes of all meat processing plants in B.C. Licensing to be under one government agency. The provincial government needs to work with local governments to ensure there are opportunities in all areas of the province for abattoirs to be in the livestock production areas. Bring the Ds and Es up to code. Think outside the box. Maybe consider using a bit more technology. And the province needs to reinvest in our industry so we can all eat more local food.

Lastly, I just want to say that if I can successfully run an A-licence abattoir, then I think that’s a viable option.

R. Leonard (Chair): Thank you very much. You can breathe now.

J. Campbell: I missed a couple of paragraphs. You have this, so you’ll read those extra paragraphs that I missed out.

R. Leonard (Chair): That’s right. But not with the same fervour that you presented with.

D. Barnett: Thank you very much for your presentation. I just have a couple of questions here. Back to page 2 — the size of your facility. What kinds of funding grants did you receive from the province? Were they repayable, or were those out-and-out grants?

J. Campbell: No. Those are the grants that they did basically for…. MEES grants or something — I’m not sure what it was. That was 75 percent funding. So we paid 25 percent of that. I think we probably ended up spending about $125,000, because we actually had to….

[5:50 p.m.]

We didn’t have a washroom. It’s actually in a separate building. Now there’s a wash facility, a shower and that sort of thing in a separate building. We couldn’t figure out how we could get that into the existing building. But we just had to upgrade the walls inside the building. We didn’t have a ceiling over the kill floor. We had a roof, but we didn’t have a hard ceiling.

D. Barnett: So 75 percent was not repayable?

J. Campbell: Right.

R. Leonard (Chair): Any other questions?

N. Simons: When we hear from people who say that upgrading their facility to get a class A licence is too expensive, too complex, unnecessary, can we use you as an example of how it’s possible? Or is it, in fact…?

J. Campbell: Sure, totally.

N. Simons: Obviously, the cost is considerable, and it’s not, as some have been told, $30,000 — obviously, in different cases, different situations.

J. Campbell: Right. It all depends what you’re working with. We were very fortunate. When my parents built the slaughterhouse in the ’50s, there was a cement floor with a cement wall and a gutter. That was sort of the basis of…. If it had just been a slab, it would have cost way more. You have to have something there to work with.

N. Simons: Can I ask what made you…? Did you decide immediately you were going to go for an A licence?

J. Campbell: Listen. I lived with my parents, and my father was probably in his 80s. He was dead set against it. My parents both had a degree in agriculture. My mother had her master’s.

My father said: “I welcome the inspectors to come any time they want. We’re not doing anything that we don’t want them to see.” He just didn’t understand why we had to do these other upgrades. He lived at a time when, with his background in agriculture…. They were both city children. They took agriculture at UBC. But with his background, he was…. The science of it — the science didn’t show it.

But I can tell you. I have seen things that some other people may have missed, and it was a good thing we had an inspector.

R. Leonard (Chair): Thank you.

No other questions, then?

Thank you very much for your presentation.

Our next presenter is the Agricultural and Farmers Institute — Alan Rebane.

N. Simons: Welcome. All the way from Powell River.

ALAN REBANE

A. Rebane: Yeah. Well, after hearing everything I’ve heard, I’m not sure that I can cover everything, that I can beat that.

N. Simons: Just for historical context, for people who don’t know, when the first 2007 rules came out, there were two regional districts that got exempted first — not right at the first. One was Haida Gwaii, and the other was Powell River regional district.

A. Rebane: That was what I was going to open up with.

I was one of the first class D licences that were issued. I bought my farm in 2009. In 2010, the first licences were being issued, and I was told I’d have to go to a course. When I did that, I wondered where we were going with this. We went to a course. It was a full-day course, and health inspectors were issuing it, but the province did provide a facilitator out of Victoria that would help them learn how to do future courses in town.

We went through that process. We went to a farm. We went through the slaughter procedure, and when we came out of it, we were all that much smarter. But I asked the questions: how could you inspect this meat, and how could we put it in the marketplace without some kind of inspection?

[5:55 p.m.]

The health inspector, a very good inspector who we don’t have now, was Dan Glover. Dan had been around for 20 years and now has moved down to Squamish recently. I can say that in the eight years I’ve had my licence, I’ve been inspected only three times. I find that very hard to digest, since I’m also a regional district director.

After going through that process and going through the process that we are today, I thought long and hard about coming to this committee and how I was going to address it. Nicholas’s office did contact a number of the meat producers, or the class D licence holders, and they all were reluctant to participate.

First of all, Powell River is unique. It’s very hard to come to the island through ferries, especially with a load of animals. I did try it. After I had my licence, I did try it. I came to Gunter’s, very professional with very nice people. I’ve gotten to know them over the years. But after two trips with eight hogs each time, it became cost-prohibitive.

I have, over the years, tried to look into a class B licence and have talked to various people in Victoria, through the agriculture, and considered putting in a class B. I was very close, and $30,000 is about the cost. Unfortunately, it became a stumbling block to get an inspector to Powell River when you needed them.

Powell River is very unpredictable. Just as the largest slaughterhouses have here on the Island, summer months are very lean. The fall is very busy. So I decided to put a butcher shop in. I have, also, a cut-and-wrap in my facilities. The class B licence. I cannot recall everything from two years ago. I built a building that I had a kill floor on. I was able to hoist the animal up and put it directly into a cooler, and provide a bathroom and an office for an inspector. That seemed pretty easy.

Then I was told…. I said: “Well, what if my cooler was just a little ways away, like 20 feet away?” Nope, can’t leave outside that building. So it became very cumbersome to start thinking about how I was going to make this all work in a very small area. I have one of the largest farms in Powell River, second to the largest.

Then there was the next case of how I was going to get rid of all the offal if I started doing it for a whole lot of other people. As you know, farmland is very precious. I have 20 acres. My daughter has just obtained another 20 acres next door. But to do it in that small an area was pretty hard. Now, since Salish Soils came in, in Sechelt, they’re taking all the offal. So we could schedule a bin there, and we could take it and start dealing with it in a different way. But it all becomes: how much is it profitable? I think everyone in Powell River has looked at or entertained it, but it’s just not enough for us to say that it’s something we can do.

To get grants, it takes time to write them. It takes time to get them into the right place. I can’t say…. I have two children that want to get into the farming industry. I’m never discouraging them, but I’m always saying: “You’ve got a lot to learn yet.”

I came here, basically, to say probably two or three things. One is that the Ministry of Agriculture needs to take control of the inspections. The Ministry of Health cannot handle it. They don’t have the experience. They don’t know anything about animals — the majority of people. Our health inspector has now been replaced with a new, young generation. I’m going to estimate that he’s probably about 28 to 30 years old. He doesn’t have any idea what an animal is supposed to look like or what shape it’s supposed to be in.

[6:00 p.m.]

As the president of the farmers institute, I’m always on everybody about the quality of their meat, but I also have a second concern. That is that the majority don’t have liability insurance. So the second place that we have failed in the class D licences has been no liability insurance. Even at the farmer’s market, I question: “Is that insured? Do you realize what you could lose?” I go on and on. And of course, as a politician in Powell River, I hear about it all the time.

The third place is the class E licences. Powell River has…. I still have not gotten a straight answer, exactly, of how many Ds and Es…. From the original eight, as far as I know, there are only five Ds left. I don’t know how many were issued after the first eight. I’ve been told just recently that there could be as many as 38 E licences in Powell River. I have no idea.

They have no inspections. They have no regulations at all, outside of going through the course. Actually, I find that just unbearable — to think that a D licence has to go through a whole lot of rigidness, but the Es, basically, float by.

If you’re going to be entertaining a D or an E licence, I would really consider the Ds being the priority and the Es being the last resort.

I find one other thing that’s a bit hard to describe. I can butcher, under a class D licence, my meat at the farm. The reason I put a butcher shop in — I will not hide the fact — is so I could get around the law. If I go to my butcher shop with that meat, once I’ve slaughtered it, that butcher’s licence allows me to sell it to anybody I want within the province.

I found this kind of a little bit absurd when I first started. We could take our meat to the local butcher shop, and he could process it for us after we threw it in the back of the pick-up truck and took it down there. He could process it. He could put it in the butcher shop and sell it to anybody around the world.

Powell River has a lot of foreign people that come there for holidays and go the local butcher shop and buy steak. I could sell my meat there. It was good enough to sell there, but it wasn’t good enough for me to slaughter and then sell a half to somebody, to a market or somewhere else. I found that being a little bit….

That’s how I created the butcher shop. Now I am inspected in the butcher shop by the Ministry of Health. To say the least, only has come by once in a year. But we do about 45 beef in the fall now. We do about 30 hogs, chickens. I actually raise chickens, and we take them to a local abattoir who does about 3,000 chickens a year. I would venture to say between 3,000 and 5,000. She does most of the Powell River regional area. I do not know why. She has got the proper facilities….

R. Leonard (Chair): Just to let you know you have another half a minute.

A. Rebane: Yes. My last statement was pretty much…. There are some changes that need to be implemented. The licences originally were only going to be in a remote area. However, they have now become a topic that is generating licences to almost every community. Or that seems to be the case here.

There is no discretion. There is just an issue of the licence and no one monitoring them. Now we are trying to reinvent the wheel that has been broken. I’m hoping that this committee…. They have a very hard row to hoe to get to that point of what would be permitted.

My last statement is that the small farmer and small meat producer are like the small business man of the province. Small producers are the backbone of the province — no different than the small business man that accounts for the major employment. Please, any changes you make should ensure the longevity and the life of agriculture and small business and the meat production of British Columbia and that it will also protect our food security. Without the small producer, you don’t have food security.

R. Leonard (Chair): Thank you very much. That’s a good wrap-up statement.

Do we have any questions from the members?

N. Simons: Thanks, Al. I appreciate…. I just looked it up. There are 37 class E licences in the province.

A. Rebane: In the province, okay.

N. Simons: I didn’t know we had 37 farms on the Sunshine Coast at all.

A. Rebane: Neither did I.

[6:05 p.m.]

N. Simons: No, but you never know, up those roads.

The issue of extension officers came up earlier. I’m just wondering if you’ve ever had the services of a Ministry of Agriculture employee, called an extension officer, with assistance on any of the aspects.

A. Rebane: No.

N. Simons: I’m wondering if there’s a role for them in assisting the small-scale producer.

Anyway, thanks for your presentation. I really appreciate it.

R. Leonard (Chair): Any other questions?

I. Paton: You were saying that you had a D licence?

A. Rebane: I have a D licence.

I. Paton: This might be a dumb question. D says “slaughter only,” but you said you put in a cut-and-wrap facility.

A. Rebane: Correct.

I. Paton: How do you get away with that?

A. Rebane: Two different operations, two different licences. A slaughter licence is one licence. I’ve been reminded of that over many years, that we can’t confuse the two. The Ministry of Health, actually, is the one that really etched it into my head that it was two different licences.

R. Leonard (Chair): Donna has a question.

D. Barnett: You said you’ve got these two different departments, and you have a licence from the Ministry of Health. How often did you say you get inspected by the Ministry of Health?

A. Rebane: On my slaughter licence, only three times over the eight years. On my butcher licence, I had a recent one. It was probably about a year and a half ago, a year to year and a half.

D. Barnett: What about the meat inspection from the inspector, for the meat?

A. Rebane: Never.

D. Barnett: Never. Thank you.

R. Leonard (Chair): Thank you very much. You’ve raised some interesting points and brought a unique experience of being within the very beginnings of the class Ds and Es.

Is Glen Beaton here? Yes, he is, okay — from StoneCroft Farm. Good afternoon.

STONECROFT FARM

G. Beaton: Good afternoon. My wife and I operate a turkey farm. We started in 1980, and from the get-go, we processed on the farm. We started at 400 birds. We built up to, in 2005, about 1,700, where we are now, which is small in the scheme of things. It may not seem small to some, but it is very small.

We started with a very spartan process, a lot like the Ds and Es now, in 1980. We both come from…. Kathy’s parents and grandparents, and my parents and grandparents, are all butchers, so we had a historic background. It was spartan, but we didn’t have any problem. In the early ’80s, we upgraded our plant. We knew we were going to stay there, so we upgraded the plant with the concrete, the building and the whole nine yards.

We had no problems, with no inspections, for 25 years. So when this inspection came up, we were hesitant. As a matter of fact, we were so hesitant, we didn’t…. Well, it was a lot of money, so we thought we weren’t going to upgrade the plant, and we’d take the birds down to Duncan. So we built a trailer that was to Australian standards, which are higher than North American standards, because of heat. We had a good trailer, and we took them down there twice, for fresh turkeys only. We weren’t happy with the transportation issues. I think that’s probably the biggest issue with these plants: the transportation. People really don’t appreciate that.

[6:10 p.m.]

In ’05, we decided to upgrade the plant. We put $90,000 into it, but we only got 50 percent back. I don’t know how that worked. Anyway, we got 50 percent, but we did put $90,000, $92,000 into the plant. We continued to process, and we’re still at 1,700. We’re limited. We are part of the B.C. Marketing Board, and the comments of quota are quite valid. They stifle the small guy. There’s no doubt about it. But we’re part of that group.

We have a class B licence, and we have never had any problems with inspectors. I think the current legislation is pretty good, really. I think inspection is important. We did it for 25 years without it, and now we’ve done it for 17 years with it, and we never had any problems. We had zero problems. But there is less risk with an inspector on site. There is just no doubt about it.

I think the B.C. government has done a good job. Our inspectors come. There’s never been a problem. We book them. Our inspector is already booked for Thanksgiving and Christmas. I know those are the dates. Book them. So far, there’s never been a problem. They come, and they’re good. I’ve often worried. In the wintertime, when there’s snow on the ground, you wonder if they’re going to make it, but they’ve always made it.

I think it’s pretty risky, and I would caution, to promote D and E licences. The liability nowadays has changed. It’s liability that is the issue. If something goes wrong, there’s a major problem, and I think it’s foolish for anybody not to be inspected. At least there’s an independent, third-party person on site to ensure that the birds are safe, to look at the facilities — if the facilities are up to speed and the procedures are properly done.

Water is regularly tested. We’ve got to do water tests. We’re on a well, so they want to see the water tests.

Offal. We’ve got another permit to take care of that. We compost that. Yes, there’s a higher cost per operating unit. There’s no question about it. It’s expensive for the government, too, because of our inspectors. It’s way cheaper with a bigger plant. You know, your cost for the government is way cheaper. But I think it’s important.

I think it’s very important…. The main thing is your transportation. To haul these animals long distances is just not good. We walk our birds from the outside pens to the plant. There’s none of this crowding stuff.

I think traceability is important. We’re small. We sell to a few shops in town and over in Powell River, as a matter of fact. We have a direct…. Most of our customers, we could phone up. It’s very good traceability.

That’s about really all I have to say. I just caution the government to…. I think it’s pretty dangerous not to have arm’s-length inspection in the plant. When we process, all our birds are inspected. Every one is looked at by the inspector — every one.

[6:15 p.m.]

You mentioned something about antibiotics. We have to sign a deal saying we don’t have antibiotics in our system, and there’s a lot of documentation. It would drive you nuts, but we’re getting used to it now.

That’s about all I have to say.

R. Leonard (Chair): Well, thank you very much. I really appreciate you sharing your experiences. I have questions, but I’m sure others do too.

D. Barnett: Thank you very much. Very interesting. Do you find that the paperwork that you have to do is repetitious or too cumbersome? Do you feel that if that could be streamlined, it might encourage other people to go into business?

G. Beaton: It’s cumbersome and awful, but I don’t think that’s what discourages people. They don’t understand it until they get into it.

Not necessary — totally. We have a form, a quadruple form. Actually, most of the time, the inspector doesn’t even look at it. Yep, it is very cumbersome, but it’s all filled out.

N. Simons: Duly noted.

G. Beaton: Nobody sends it, nobody wants it, but it’s quadruple, boy.

R. Leonard (Chair): A question I have for you. You’ve spent many years without inspections, and then you’ve spent many years with inspections. What is the difference in terms of how you, as a farmer, have operated? What was the benefit, other than the reduction of the risk? What has the benefit been for you?

G. Beaton: To be honest, it’s just the reduction in risk. All our birds are sold. Right now we’re sold out. We could sell more. The people — I don’t know about anywhere else — on Vancouver Island want the local food. We have a shop that puts our bird against the Lilydale birds. Our birds are $1 a pound more, and he wants more of our birds. The people want local birds. They want them on the range.

There are a lot of things that we’re doing that the commercial boys don’t. That’s what people want, and they’re prepared to pay for it. That is where the small operator has to go, in my mind. You’ve got to go to the niche market, because there’s no way I could compete with Lilydale. It’s hopeless.

N. Simons: You mentioned the transportation issue. It looked like you wanted to get right past that because it wasn’t a good experience. Do you think that you speak for a lot of people about that issue around transportation?

G. Beaton: Oh, I think so. Oh yeah. We were at the point where you were either going to build an abattoir or quit. Our trailer was better than the B.C. standards — or Canadian standards, actually.

R. Leonard (Chair): What was the issue with it?

G. Beaton: Well, it was just that it was crowded like that. It’s crowding. I think that’s going to be a bigger issue in the meat trade than people…. It’s going to come up. Crowding is just not…. I kill tens of thousands of turkeys, but I don’t torment them before I kill them.

N. Simons: I think you expressed that really well, and I appreciate that.

J. Tegart (Deputy Chair): I’m a firm supporter of small farming, but I don’t ever want you to take me for a walk. [Laughter.]

R. Leonard (Chair): Thank you very much, Mr. Beaton.

Now we have Chris Brown. Welcome, Mr. Brown.

CHRIS BROWN

C. Brown: Good afternoon. I feel like a fish out of water at the moment, because I wasn’t too sure what this was all about.

Anyway, I come here as a producer. I have used a local abattoir, with their inspection services. I have used an abattoir down-Island, in the Duncan area, with their inspection services as well. Hang on. No, I’ve used two abattoirs down there.

[6:20 p.m.]

I’ve also used another guy based out of Qualicum. I’m not sure which licence he carries, but he’s an independent. He does the on-farm slaughter, which is something that’s happening in the Alberni Valley, I believe. That’s what he does mainly — the Alberni Valley. Then the animal is processed through his butcher shop complex.

When I actually escort the animal on my farm, they’re very calm when they’re slaughtered. They’re in the field where they normally graze, and they just drop. There’s no stress. There’s no smell of blood, which you have in an abattoir, as such. So there are a lot of humane effects that improve the quality of the animal’s state of mind upon slaughter. Now, I’m talking purely as a beef producer, not on the poultry or lamb side of things.

I’ve also had a lot of experience from Australia. Thirty years ago I actually built an export abattoir back there. It had a throughput of 100 beef in a half-day period, and I only had two operators. So it was fully mechanized. The thing with that particular installation…. All abattoirs in Australia are export quality. They all have inspectors, and the inspector is on the floor at all times. If the inspector leaves the floor, all operations cease. The other thing that they also do is that all quarters of the carcass are stamped with the inspector’s number. Also, the tail-tag number or the ear-tag number is actually stamped on the carcass.

I believe that doesn’t take place here. The inspector puts his number on it, but there’s no ear-tag or tail-tag number actually stamped on the carcass. Now, by putting that on the carcass itself, you have a direct relationship between that particular animal, that particular farm to that particular carcass. There’s traceability. My experience is that that never occurred, even through the inspected plants here.

That’s an improvement that I believe the inspectors should be actually encouraged to do — to put the ear-tag number, which is a national identification number, stamped on all quarters of the animal before it leaves the actual abattoir. It’s the inspector’s responsibility to do that. It’s not the abattoir’s manager or anybody like that. It’s the actual inspector. So there’s this correlation between the farm and subsequent, verifiable information that that particular animal is coming from that farm.

The other thing that the Australians did…. I know it’s a different perspective, but they also have, actually, 14 different tail-tags in Australia now — the reason being that it depends on what the animal is fed. That was a key thing that was required for the export of Australian beef to McDonald’s in America. The Americans required this.

DTT has a half-life of 50 years. I had personal experience. In my family in Australia, they actually sold an animal through the auction system, and they didn’t identify it as having been exposed to DDT. It came out positive on a test, and that family member couldn’t sell any of their cows for human consumption for two years. It just wiped them out, basically.

[6:25 p.m.]

Now DDT is all over the valley, any farm that has grown vegetables. DDT — even in Canada here, I believe — was not eliminated till the 1970s, so we’re still in the crux of that 50-year half-life.

If you’re feeding animal food to animals from farmland that has actually been used for vegetable production within the last 50 years, you could be suspect. You could be. But that’s something to do with the Canadian Food Inspection Agency. It’s another agency that’s above what we’re dealing with here, so that’s immaterial.

Anyway, that’s all I’ve basically got to say.

R. Leonard (Chair): Thank you very much, Chris.

Any questions? Mike has a question for you.

M. Morris: I was just wondering. Just going back to…. Somebody shows up on the farm and slaughters the animal on the farm, is that a mobile abattoir that they bring in?

C. Brown: It’s a rack and a refrigerated van, yes. The offal, I compost that on my farm. Where all that takes place, there are no wells within…. It’d be 200 metres away, because I’m quite central within the property.

M. Morris: Okay. Just a follow-up to that. Do you retail that somewhere?

C. Brown: Through the farmers markets. I have it frozen. It’s processed by this licensed processor who freezes it, and the frozen product is dealt with at the farmers markets.

I’m not dealing with, you know, restaurants or that trade, but I haven’t had any recalls. We actually take a notation of each piece of meat and who’s actually bought it.

D. Barnett: Is that inspected by the health inspector and the meat inspector? Who does the inspection?

C. Brown: At the abattoirs, they are inspected. Again, my experience there was that there was no direct correlation between the carcass and having the tail tag number stamped on the carcass. So it’s a matter of debate whether I actually got the carcass that I produced, because it hasn’t got a number on it, on the carcass. The tail tag or the ear tag disappeared at the killing floor, so there’s no correlation between that particular animal coming from my place anymore.

I’ve lost that viability — verifying the information. There’s no verification that that particular animal comes from my place. Not saying that it isn’t, but I can tell when I’m at the abattoir. I see my animal go through, and I know it’s my animal because of the amount of fat that’s on it and all of those sorts of things.

R. Leonard (Chair): Okay. Well, thank you very much. Any other questions? Thank you very much for taking the time to come out and present.

The last speaker that we have on the list is Bruce Bradley. Welcome.

BRUCE BRADLEY

B. Bradley: It hasn’t been too long yet. I think this is a really good session here. I’d like to thank everybody that’s presented already, because this has been really informative for me and, I’m sure, everyone here.

[6:30 p.m.]

My name is Bruce Bradley, and I’m really interested in using goats for fuel mitigation. I think there’s a really big opportunity in British Columbia right now, because of the tremendous wildfire pressure, to develop the goat meat industry across the board, enabled by these community wildfire protection plans. For example, Cranbrook is spending $21 million on their community wildfire protection plan this year.

In Comox, which is where I’m from…. I got a chance to pitch this to Ronna-Rae on the plane a couple of weeks ago. We’re doing our community wildfire protection plan. I’d worked with goats before. I grew up in agriculture. My trade, though, is a commercial fisherman. So I’ve been trying to develop a program that is marketable to the CWPP, the regional CWPPs. Let me just kind of introduce that to you guys right now.

This is kind of like a general pilot project that, I think, can be adopted across the board in the right area. I kind of use the Comox Valley as an example.

The intent of the 2018-19 timber goat grazing pilot project is to establish a breeding herd of B.C. timber goats at a central ranching station and determine their effectiveness and range along a fuel mitigation corridor. Working with Archipelago biological validating to register the herd with a carbon value, their daily presence grazing in the corridor could be monitored and carbon capture and fuel mitigation tonnage certificates issued on a monthly basis.

The goat herd recycles excess vegetation and fuel sources into the soil, and targeted tree species can be trimmed with a chainsaw by one of the herders. I consulted with B.C. Hydro a little bit, because they’re kind of natural partners, because they do vegetation management under their hydro wires — kind of teaming with them to identify those regions, like: “This is where we can establish firebreaks.”

After consulting with B.C. Hydro, I discovered that their primary focus for corridor vegetation management is controlling the taller-growing trees and that actually leaving the shorter-growing vegetation to compete with tree growth helps their program. This makes total sense from a budget perspective and, I think, is a real opportunity for regional community wildfire protection plans to integrate with distribution vegetation management to improve total fuel reduction in these areas.

Cost and site preparation were also identified by B.C. Hydro as a major constraint to widespread adoption. That’s where effectively planning your station plays an important role in delivering low-cost, goat-based fuel mitigation and carbon capture.

As identified in Forest Service…. It’s in the appendix. Check this out, Forest Service of B.C.’s silviculture note, Sheep Grazing in Forestry. This goes back to 1997, because I think it’s program that’s been phased out. Livestock, like our speakers have mentioned before, is at all-time low levels. There’s not the capability out there. There’s not the stock. There are not the ranchers. There are not the people.

Anyway, one-season, sheep-grazing treatment…. I’m into goats. This says sheep, because sheep is kind of like…. They have big sheep ranches in the northeast of the province there. Anyway, grazing treatments range from $250 per hectare to $470 per hectare, with provincial averages of $360. But openings close to sheep ranches cost as little as $150 per hectare.

By kind of establishing goat ranches in these fuel mitigation zones as a low-cost way to improve the fire security of communities but then also developing new people entering the market in almost a different type of agriculture, using the fuels that people are trying to rid of as a food stock and putting a price on that service, you get kind of a double whammy from your livestock. You’ve got your meat sales, but then you’ve also got your fuel mitigation and grazing services. That makes it a better economic incentive for people to get into the market as a commercial proposition.

Locating our ranching station along an intended fuel mitigation corridor takes advantage of a goat herd’s natural psychology and range. Goats like eating out in the open, so they’ll have a tendency to want to range up and down the corridor. Using border collies to herd goats along this corridor is a low-cost option to control the goat herd, versus portable fencing.

Benefits to running goats through fuel mitigation corridors include elimination of vegetative fuel sources in the zero-to-six-foot level, elimination of deer tick habitat and numbers, invasive weed reduction and increasing vegetative competition, soil improvement and carbon value accruement.

[6:35 p.m.]

If you look on the front there, this is my last goat herd. I did some pilot projects for the invasive council of Ontario. I did a pilot project last year, and I gave the Ontario council of invasive weeds a tour. That’s a big thicket of Japanese knotweed, and those goats got right into that. Goats are browsers. They prefer broadleaf weeds and do really well at thinning out invasive weeds and the fuel sources.

At a time when climate change and wildfires are threatening to consume so many B.C. communities, taking practical steps to improve existing fire breaks and forest fuel management perspectives are paramount. The 2005 Summary of Forest Plantation Brushing with Sheep amounted to zero percent utilization in the southern Interior and coastal regions. That reflects the large potential for growth and economic development by adopting these complementary practices.

I kind of go on into more of the program — so goat meat for economic and cultural development. Goat meat is the most popular red meat in the world. Naturally, Canada has a strong representation for many of these diverse nations, so producing more goat meat helps provide for the preferred diets of many of these people living in Canada.

Coming to the whole slaughter aspect of it…. One of the really important things about delivering goat meat, especially to the Muslim market, is halal ability. They want a slaughterhouse…. Well, lots of them will like to come to the farm and do the slaughtering themselves. They’ll say a prayer and everything. But in other markets, there are halal slaughterhouses. Everything that comes there is processed in a halal fashion. So enabling these different regional, especially more urban, communities to be halal certified is, I think, a big step to helping grow the goat market.

With zero percent utilization in the southern Interior and coastal regions, as mentioned above, there’s lots of room for growth. Effective forestry herds have been mentioned as between 1,500 and 2,000, but municipally…. Edmonton, for example, has a municipal herd going right now. That herd’s around 250.

Just a note on goats for carbon capture and fuel mitigation. Pound for pound, goats eat about 3 to 1 versus cows and sheep. If they were all the same weight animal, a goat would eat three times more. That’s what makes them really effective for brush control. If you figure that goats eat six pounds of vegetation per day, with a herd of 200 goats you can convert 1,200 pounds of fuel into healthy topsoil each day. You can also assume that if every goat weighs 70 pounds….

It depends. You’ve got different herd sizes. But you’ve got a continuous kinetic force of 14,000 pounds working to trample, degrade and bury fuel sources on the goat level. So if you have 200 goats or 400 goats…. Imagine. That almost weighs as much as an excavator. You can have an excavator sitting there clearing brush with lots of compaction, or you can have, through the whole day, a tremendous amount of continuous kinetic force just pitter-patter and trampling everything around you. That degrades leaves, trees, wood and all that and drives it into the ground. That’s another force that helps capture carbon.

There’s a graph that just kind of shows a typical farm start-up starting with maybe 50 goats and working up to 400 and how that metric really increases with the accumulated annual kinetic ground force applications and the annual carbon capture and fuel mitigation. I think that’s important for CWPPs.

What’s interesting about this is that…. I came up with a B.C. timber goat carbon capture and fuel mitigation futures. Just for this region, as an example, it gives TimberWest, Comox regional district, B.C. Hydro and Mount Washington the ability to….

You purchase future metric tonnes of carbon capture. You sign a contract saying: “Oh, maybe I want 100 tonnes of carbon capture and sequester from this area right here because it’s all bushy and it’s kind of fire hazard.” A goat’s carbon value can be calculated by the amount it eats per day. So 2.72 kilograms — that’s just metric for six pounds, plus 1/100 of the goat’s mass. So that’s kind of….It seems complicated, but it’s not. Therefore, a 50 kilogram doe has a daily carbon capture and fuel mitigation value of 4.08 kilograms.

R. Leonard (Chair): Just to let you know, another 30 seconds.

B. Bradley: Thirty seconds. Okay.

This is kind of an invoice here. After someone gets a contract for fuel mitigation, then you take your goats there for 60 or 120 days, and then you submit this invoice after. You get your goats validated by Archipelago, which monitors all the fisheries in British Columbia. They’re really good.

I’ll just try and…. So using this model, if someone wanted to purchase 1,000 tonnes, that would be redeemed by 250 goats grazing for close to 1,000 days.

[6:40 p.m.]

Say the municipality said, “We want 500 tonnes,” for example. That 500 tonnes might be over three years. Every time you go to a region in that municipality, you can say: “Oh, we did 60 tonnes here, 80 tonnes here, so many tonnes there.” Those carbon-credit invoices can be accumulated by that regional municipality or whoever is ordering that. That, hopefully, can be a write-off for the carbon tax.

Then I want to touch on this for Ronna-Rae. The local 4-H extension. One of the best ways to improve municipal fire breaks is to engage local landowners to participate in the B.C. timber goat extension program. Current potential meat producers may have room for five to ten goats on their own property, especially if grazing can improve their private fire break.

These smaller herds can be registered with the timber goat program to provide uniformity of veterinary and breeding standards and then utilized as local producers to supply a larger regional carbon capture and fuel mitigation herd.

R. Leonard (Chair): Thanks very much, Bruce. I appreciate your presentation.

Do we have any questions?

D. Barnett: Thank you very much for your presentation. It was very interesting. You said you did a pilot project in Ontario?

B. Bradley: Yeah, last year. I grew up in Ontario. My family’s farm was there. I had the summer off last year, so I was, like, I’m just going to go home. I always had this goat idea because I was in charge of weed control on all the banks and stuff. We’re right on a peninsula.

It’s a fenceless system, and I just kind of stockpiled the goats. Once I had about 25 there, they would kind of go around together and really get in there and clear all kinds of brush. I actually have a YouTube channel, Bradley Working Goats, that has lots of pictures from my herd. I gave it to the Ontario council for invasive weeds. “This is awesome. We get lots of requests for this stuff, but there are really no contractors in Ontario.”

The thing is, I own a house out here. I’ve been here for over ten years, so my future is not really back there. It’s here. That’s why getting an audience with all you fine people is great, to try and pitch this program.

D. Barnett: If I could just ask: it wasn’t related to a municipality or a regional district or anything? It was just one you did on your own?

B. Bradley: It was my own private program to kind of like fix up the farm, graze down all the weeds. I fixed up a barn too.

J. Tegart (Deputy Chair): It’s interesting. I know in my area, in Kamloops, they use goats for invasive species, and it’s been a very successful program. It’s interesting to see someone bring this perspective in a different way. I just wonder where you have pitched the idea, besides here. I assume you’ve been to the Ministry of Agriculture, the Ministry of Forests.

B. Bradley: Well, I started with the local fire department in Oyster River, and I talked to my fire chief about that because he was one of the guys doing the community wildfire protection program. So I kind of started with him, and then he put me onto some different stakeholders in the community. I’ve been going around and around, pitching this idea and getting all the partners together, people that will be involved. That involves the community wildfire protection plans, private landowners and then the people that want to do this, the goat breeders that are breeding goats right now and who want to expand and move into the carbon capture and fuel mitigation market.

R. Leonard (Chair): Any other questions? No?

Well, thank you very much, Bruce Bradley, for this new perspective. I’ll just put on a little new channel. I appreciate it.

Now we’re at the end of our list of speakers, but we have set aside a few minutes if anyone who has not registered wants to come up and make a short presentation for five minutes or ask questions.

I think pretty much everybody has had something to say then. Okay. Well, thank you, everyone, for coming out and participating. We really appreciate it. All of your words have been recorded on Hansard and will form part of the record so that we can move forward on recommendations.

Thank you very much for your time, and we look forward to going to other communities and growing our mandate to do a good job for making small-scale meat production more of a reality for more people in British Columbia.

The meeting is now adjourned.

The committee adjourned at 6:45 p.m.