The committee met at 11:01 a.m.

[R. Leonard in the chair.]

R. Leonard (Chair): Good morning, everyone. We are right on time, which is great. It’s nice to be here in Cranbrook.

My name is Ronna-Rae Leonard. I’m the MLA for Courtenay-Comox, as well as the Chair of the Select Standing Committee on Agriculture, Fish and Food. I’d like to begin with the recognition that we are gathering today on the traditional territories of the Ktunaxa people.

We’re an all-party parliamentary committee of the Legislative Assembly, with a 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 across the province. British Columbians can participate in these public hearings, either in person or by teleconference. You can see this little speaker on a stand, like a popsicle, where we’ll have a few folks joining us by telephone. 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 today, we thank you for taking the time to participate. 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 that 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 questions from the committee here. All meetings are recorded and transcribed by Hansard Services, 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.

Now I’d like to ask the members of the committee to introduce themselves. We’ll start with our Deputy Chair.

J. Tegart (Deputy Chair): Good morning. I’m Jackie Tegart, and I’m the MLA for Fraser-Nicola — which is the Ashcroft, Cache Creek, Merritt, Hope area.

D. Barnett: Good morning. I’m Donna Barnett, from the Cariboo-Chilcotin — from Anahim Lake to almost 70 Mile House.

M. Morris: Good morning. I’m Mike Morris, MLA for Prince George–Mackenzie, the geographical centre of our great province.

I. Paton: Good morning. Ian Paton, MLA for Delta South, a former dairy farmer and former partner in McClary Stock Yards in Abbotsford.

D. Routley: I’m Doug Routley, and I represent the area from Duncan up to about a third of Nanaimo on Vancouver Island, and about five or six different little islands — lots of ferries.

R. Singh: I’m Rachna Singh. I’m MLA for Surrey–Green Timbers.

N. Simons: My name is Nicholas Simons. I represent Powell River–Sunshine Coast — basically, Gibsons to Lund.

R. Leonard (Chair): Okay, thank you very much.

Assisting the committee today, very ably, and keeping us all on track, are Jennifer Arril and Stephanie Raymond at the back, from the Parliamentary Committees Office.

[11:05 a.m.]

Over there at the Hansard table are Simon DeLaat and Amanda Heffelfinger, who are here to record the proceedings and who work very hard for hours before and after every meeting to set it up so that your words will be immortalized.

Let’s start our presentations here. Kootenay Livestock Association — Faye Street. Please come have a seat here. Welcome.

Presentations on
Meat Production and Inspection

KOOTENAY LIVESTOCK ASSOCIATION

F. Street: I was a little late in getting my presentation put together. I spent the last week touring your beautiful coastline off the Island. We went with a company that has a barge that delivers to all the logging companies, the mining companies, etc. What a great experience. Wow. What a great way to see the British Columbia coast. We went into every little mining place, logging camp. It was really amazing.

R. Leonard (Chair): Was that the Uchuck?

F. Street: Yeah. It was great.

Anyway, as you said, my name is Faye Street. I’ve been with the Kootenay Livestock Association for 30-plus years, and I now chair the wildlife committee. I want to thank you all for travelling our great province and listening to the concerns of this very important industry. We very much appreciate you giving us this opportunity, and we thank you all for your service to this province.

A brief history I’d like to go through first. Prior to the introduction of the agricultural land reserve, agricultural land owners in this great province had the right and the ability to sell off small parcels of their non-productive lands when necessary due to weather- or disease-related hardships or other disasters. Those land rights were forcibly taken away with the introduction of the ALR.

The four cornerstones of the ALR were introduced as a form of compensation for the forced removal of those property rights. One, the Farm Income Insurance Act provided the assurance that the cost of production would always be met. The second one, the Agricultural Credit Act, provided government guarantees for agricultural loans and provided for farm mortgage interest rebates. The Agricultural Development Act provided a program that encouraged the development of and the improvement of farmlands through incentives such as long-term, low-interest loans for land clearing, well drilling, drainage and other farm improvements. The Farm Product Industry Act provided for the development and the promotion of value-added for these industries. They were all extremely important support programs for this amazing industry to survive.

Very sadly, to the detriment of this industry, all four have been shoplifted away by one government or the other. That, along with the heavy financial burden of governments, wildlife eating our crops and our livestock, and the very negative changes to the meat inspection regulations…. Ranching here in the Kootenays is getting more and more difficult and more and more depressing. These economic hardships, loaded onto the backs of our dedicated and hardworking families, add a lot of negative social impacts. Very sadly, we see more and more families breaking up and a very serious lack of young people staying or returning to the land.

I want to share with you a very personal experience that my family went through during the very difficult BSE years. Many ranchers were being very hard hit with the low prices of fall calves, but especially heartbreaking was to ship our retired cows off to market only to receive a bill from the trucking company, as the price we were getting for our cows wasn’t even enough to cover the trucking.

Our family had a very serious sit-down discussion about this disgusting one more kick in the guts, and we decided that we were long tired of being low-income prostitutes to a high-profit pimp. Something had to change, or we were going to be out of business. So we came up with a plan, and this was how it went. We made up a one-page ad stating: “Mountain Meadow Ranch is now direct-marketing their beef.” We took our accounts payable ledger out, and we hand-delivered a copy of our ad to each and every business, doctor, dentist, hospital, hairdresser, barber and any and all other businesses and people that we had ever spent a cent of our hard-earned money on. We sent the same ad to all our friends and families.

[11:10 a.m.]

We started taking orders, and we added the hard work of the whole family, which was required to finish and process our own beef on our own ranch. We sold the hides direct to a plant in Edmonton. They picked them up right at our ranch. We dropped the tenderloins out, because as anyone knows, this product never loses its quality, no matter how old Mrs. Retiree cow is. So we sold them at tenderloin prices.

Then we made beef jerky — prime beef jerky, which brings a really good price — out of the good rump cuts. We made a very high-quality lean ground beef and sausage out of the rest, and we direct-marketed them all. What a huge treat to get paid a fair price for our product, finally. Instead of getting a bill for $200 to cover the trucking, we were netting $1,200 for a retiree cow. It was a huge, huge difference.

We also took orders and sold our young beef directly to the consumers, again, at a fair but a much better price than we could have ever gotten by putting them on a truck and sending them into the system where we are price-takers, not price-makers — and that leaves us vulnerable to the big corporations that devour the profits. That action took our family, and it saved our family ranch, from bankruptcy during BSE.

The change in the meat regulations took that away from us, and it was the final straw that broke the back of our family ranch. Farm-gate sales are extremely important to our industry. The ranching industry continually struggles with the very high input costs, weather-related wrecks, diseases, predator kills and a huge list of ongoing problems. That makes the picture a very bleak one for our young people wishing to take over a family ranch or in any way get involved with ranching.

We need all the help we can get if this industry is to survive. The past decade has seen a large number of our ranches here in this region sold off to non-productive operations. We very sadly fear what ranching in this region will look like in another decade. Significant changes to increase the profit are vital to this very important industry, and we look to you as our government to make these changes.

I will close with this, and ask that you please remember and consider it carefully when making your decision regarding future meat regulations. The consumption of food is one of life’s greatest pleasures, and the production of food is one of life’s greatest treasures. It’s not an industry that can be learned in a six-week course or overnight.

We are the food producers that feed the people. The sustainability of local food production is one of this government’s most important tasks. I really encourage you to think about that. As I talked to some people about my presentation, they said: “Faye, you know what you forgot? You totally forgot the demand from us local consumers because of the improved quality of the product we get when we buy it locally, and the fair cost that we pay. We can pay a rancher a fair price and get way better quality than we can buy from the big-box stores.”

I’ve also included a copy of one of my favourite poems. If I still have time, Madam Chair, I’d like to read it to you.

R. Leonard (Chair): Yes, you do.

F. Street:

On the eighth day, God looked down on his planned paradise and said: “I need a caretaker.” So God made a farmer.

God said: “I need somebody willing to get up before dawn, milk cows, work all day in the field, milk cows again, eat supper, then go to town and stay past midnight at a meeting of the school board.” So God made a farmer.

God said: “I need somebody willing to sit up all night with a newborn colt and watch it die, then dry his eyes and say: ‘Maybe next year.’”

“I need somebody who can shape an axe handle from an ash tree, shoe a horse with a hunk of car tire, who can make a harness out of haywire, feed sacks and shoe scraps. Who, during planting time and harvest season, will finish his 40-hour week by Tuesday noon, and then, paining from his ‘tractor back,’ put in another 72 hours.” So God made a farmer.

God said: “I need somebody strong enough to clear trees and heave bales, yet gentle enough to clean lambs and wean pigs and tend the pink combs of the pullets, who will stop his mower for an hour to splint the leg of a meadowlark.” So God made a farmer.

It had to be somebody who’d plow deep and straight and not cut corners. Somebody to seed, weed, feed, breed and rake and disc and plow and plant and tie the fleece and strain the milk. Somebody who’d bale a family together with the soft, strong bonds of sharing, who would laugh and then sigh, and then reply with smiling eyes when his son or daughter said that they wanted to spend their lives doing what mom and dad did.

However, we are losing that at a very rapid rate, and government, with their regulations, is contributing to that loss.

[11:15 a.m.]

If we don’t have young people on our lands, we do not have food production, and then we’re looking at all our food being imported. That scares the hell out of me.

R. Leonard (Chair): Thank you very much for your presentation. I’ll see if there are any questions.

M. Morris: Thank you, Faye, for that presentation. You say that significant changes are needed to increase profits, and you also say that regulations are stifling the industry. Can you give me a couple of examples of what changes you would like to see that would help you increase your profits and a couple of examples of the regulations that are stifling your business?

F. Street: You bet, Mike. It wasn’t broke, so I don’t know why you guys…. I’m not accusing you guys. I don’t know why government decided they needed to fix it. There was nothing wrong with the regulations the way they were before. That gave the producer the full value of his product without the middleman gouging all the profits out of it.

Many, many ranchers were selling a lot of their animals farm-gate, and that gives you the full value of your product. When you put it on a truck and send it away, a huge percentage of the value is gone.

I don’t understand why government made these changes. I understand that government is responsible for the safety of the public health. However every E. coli breakout I hear about comes out of Cargill — all those big guys who really don’t care.

I, as a producer, give a big damn about my consumer and who I’m selling my beef, pork or chicken to. I care. The trace-back is real simple. If I sell you bad meat, the trace-back is simple. When 600 or 700 cows go into one bin of hamburger or sausage at Cargill, how the hell are you ever going to trace back an E. coli…? That’s just a joke, in my opinion.

That really helps the farmer increase his bottom line, because he’s getting full value for the product that he’s receiving without having to deal with a lot of government regulation.

I agree that government is responsible. So then put the onus on the producer. Say to that producer: “If you’re going to sell farm-gate to a client, it’s your responsibility to make sure that that is a clean, healthy product and that no one is going to get sick.”

However, like I said, we care way more about the product we sell than some guy just working for wages in a huge big plant, mostly who can’t even speak English. So to me, there’s your health guard right there, because the producer cares about his consumer. We used to have a lot of clients who actually came out to the farm and wanted to see the animals before they bought.

I also think there needs to be consequences.

N. Simons: Faye, what does speaking English have to do with that? Why did you have to raise the issue of language?

F. Street: Just because a lot of them can’t even read the regulations, and I know that. I’ve visited many plants.

N. Simons: I just think it shows a little bit of a bias that was unnecessary.

F. Street: Well, I didn’t mean that at all, not at all.

N. Simons: I think that’s fair to point that out, that you didn’t mean that.

F. Street: Fine.

I think there should be consequences. If there’s a producer there who is being sloppy or taking the consumer’s health lightly, then there should be tough consequences brought down for them.

M. Morris: Just one follow-up, Faye. When you reference the change in regulations, were you talking a number of years ago when we changed some of the Canadian Food Inspection Agency…?

F. Street: Yes, correct.

M. Morris: Okay, thanks.

D. Barnett: Thank you, Faye, for your presentation. I’ve been to many presentations with you over many issues — elk and other things — over the past many years.

What is your production now? How many animals do you have?

F. Street: None.

D. Barnett: None.

F. Street: No, because like I said in my presentation, when the meat regulations were changed and we knew we could no longer go gate to plate.

At that point, our family farm was in the middle of our sons wanting to take over. It was a sad day, Donna, when our sons finally said: “Mom, we thought it over. We’ve done a lot of soul-searching. And really, you think about it, you and Dad don’t hardly ranch anymore. All you do is fight. You fight the government. You fight the ministry of highways. You fight forestry, wildlife. We don’t want to do that, Mom.” He said: “You go to meetings five nights out of seven sometimes. We’re not doing it.”

Then my husband piped up and said: “If you don’t stop encouraging these boys to take over this ranch, I’m going to charge you with child abuse, because that’s what it is.” Sad day.

D. Barnett: If I could have one follow-up. How many ranches and farms have you lost in the Kootenays in the last, say, ten years?

[11:20 a.m.]

F. Street: Probably at least a third have been sold off. For example, we sold our ranch. We still have a small operation, but we sold our big ranch to a Calgary oil company. They’ve given up all the range units. Instead of running 200 head of brood cows, which we did, they now run 30 head of play cows. So we’re losing our producers here.

Not only that, Donna. The other side of that coin is that we have so many young people saying, “No, we’re not doing this,” and how can we blame them?

N. Simons: Faye, nice to see you again.

When did you sell your…?

F. Street: Ten years ago.

N. Simons: Ten years ago. So that was six years into the previous government. Then ten years after that, that’s when all the regulations started changing. And you say that’s the basic issue at hand — the changes in the meat regulations that caused you to be unviable.

F. Street: When we realized just how much extra profit could be made in order to cover the input costs and when that was taken away from us, that was when we decided: what is the point in going back when we had gone through all the work in hell of figuring out a better way to do it? And a lot of other producers in this valley followed our example. They started selling gate to plate. We had a huge consumer market here.

We didn’t have an abattoir. I spent four years working my face off with Kootenay Livestock, trying to get an abattoir here and trying to get Columbia Basin Trust to help us finance it. As I said to them: “That big pot of money you’ve got, Columbia Basin Trust? That’s our money. You wouldn’t have it, if you hadn’t flooded out all those ranchlands.”

We couldn’t get any help. And when you get so old — I’m 70 years old — are you’re going to keep working your guts out for Cargill? I don’t think so. I will work my guts out for local consumers who appreciate good-quality food. But I won’t do it for Cargill. And that was the decision that was made.

R. Leonard (Chair): Thank you very much, Faye, for your presentation and answering the questions of our committee members.

Moving on, we have a full plate today. We have Windermere District Farmers. It’s Hedi Trescher.

Please come to the table. Welcome.

WINDERMERE DISTRICT
FARMERS INSTITUTE

H. Trescher: Good morning, everybody. My name is Hedi Trescher, and I’m the project coordinator for the Windermere District Farmers Institute.

The Windermere District Farmers Institute is not in favour of relaxing the rules for class E licences. The Windermere District Farmers Institute and Livestock Association represents the interests of the agricultural community from Canal Flats to Golden. It was incorporated in 1914 and has been in continuous operation ever since. We’re very proud of that.

In the past, livestock was regularly processed and sold in our valley. The new meat inspection regulations, which were enacted in 2004, required that abattoirs have to be licensed to produce meat for sale for human consumption. As our nearest abattoir was more than 150 kilometres away, many of the small producers went out of business, and the number of livestock raised in the valley decreased significantly.

It became difficult for the public to purchase locally produced meat. Therefore, the Windermere District Farmers Institute decided to construct a small abattoir where our livestock could be custom-slaughtered, inspected and sold. We understood that class E licences were to be issued in areas where the distance to a class A or B abattoir or a lack of capacity was creating a hardship. While such a facility did not produce a government-inspected product, it did not have to meet the exacting standards expected of class A or B abattoirs.

Even though we were more than a two-hour drive from the nearest abattoir and would have qualified for a class E licence at that time — but there were other restrictions besides that — we decided that we would construct a class A abattoir in order to be able to produce a product that met the highest standards and would be government-inspected. We could then market the meat not only as farm-gate sales, but it could also be sold to stores and restaurants.

[11:25 a.m.]

The planning took years, and we had many hurdles to overcome. The main ones were zoning and financing. The financing was especially difficult, as many sources of funding that we had been led to believe would be available did not materialize. As it turned out, only 20 percent of the $630,000 cost ended up coming from grants. The rest came from the Windermere District Farmers Institute, 20 percent; and members’ donations, 60 percent.

The construction was started in May 2016, and the first animal was processed on March 22, 2017. Our abattoir is leased and operated by a private operator, Grant Kelly, under the name of Columbia Valley Meat and Sausage.

Now, we decided we were not able to operate the business effectively, and a private operator would be better doing it. Now, he had some restrictions — what he could or could not do — which meant that he had to butcher for everybody. He wasn’t completely free to pick and choose.

Our abattoir has a cooler capacity to hang 18 full-sized beef carcasses, the equivalent of 54 hog carcasses. It is presently running at less than 25 percent capacity. We have lots of room for increases in demand.

The pre-2004 situation, when farmers could kill livestock on the farm and deliver the carcass to a cut-and-wrap establishment, had worked well for us. It was simple, flexible and cheaper than having animals killed at an abattoir. However, when food safety became an important issue, the government changed the rules. We understood the reason for the new rules, and the Windermere District Farmers Institute has made a huge investment in order to allow our livestock producers to process and market safe, inspected meat products.

Building an abattoir is only the first step. In order to be in operation, it has to be financially viable. We live in an area that has a small population base and, therefore, a limited market. By having a much smaller investment, class E licence holders can operate cheaper and, thus, significantly erode the market share available to our own abattoir. Small class E and B abattoirs already have a tough time competing financially, and a number of them have ceased operating in British Columbia in the last few years.

Increasing the unfair competition from class E licences by relaxing the existing rules would put an even greater financial strain on abattoirs producing government-inspected products.

You, the government, have taken on the role of legislating and monitoring food safety. My question to you is: are you really seriously considering changing the rules and thereby increasing the amount of uninspected meat for sale to the consumer? We hope that your committee understands that in order for our industry to prosper, it is vital that the consumer believes our product to be both healthy and safe. Thank you.

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

N. Simons: Thank you very much for your presentation, Hedi. It was very interesting. What makes you think that our intention is to relax E licences, and how would that even be possible at this point?

H. Trescher: We have a movement, obviously, afoot locally. A producer is asking that the distance restrictions be completely eliminated. While I sympathize with the lady, and I know it is much…. You know, it’s nice to be able to shoot the cow at home and to load her up and bring her. You know, it’s a lot handier, but that’s not the regulations. We followed the regulations. We built our abattoir. We just think that, you know, it’s got to be financially viable.

We didn’t want a white elephant. We wanted an operating abattoir.

[11:30 a.m.]

D. Barnett: Thank you for your presentation. Your abattoir — is it also a processing plant or just strictly slaughtering?

H. Trescher: We do cut-and-wrap.

D. Barnett: You do cut-and-wrap.

H. Trescher: Yes, and the operator has…. I mean, we lease it out on the condition that he kills and processes beef, hogs, sheep and goats. Anything else, he can do. That’s up to him, but he does have to do that for anybody in the district.

When we first started, we thought we had a local cut-and-wrap operation that would buy into our abattoir, and we were only thinking about class B. But the party backed out, and then we thought, well, an abattoir without a cut-and-wrap is not very good. So we incorporated cut-and-wrap.

One of the stipulations is that the operator has to kill for everybody. It’s because the killing…. There is no money in killing. The money is in the cut-and-wrap. He has to kill for everybody, even if they take the carcass and have it cut and wrapped somewhere else, or if a restaurant takes it home to do their own processing. That’s the contract he has with us. He has a very favourable rate for renting, because we want it to operate. We don’t need to make money on it. All the private donations are given. They don’t have to be paid back.

R. Singh: Mine was a very quick one. Thank you, Hedi. It was a great presentation. I just wanted to check. It’s a smaller community. Do you see that there are many more farmers going with the E licence, that more farms are emerging that way?

H. Trescher: Well, there is this one farm. If you’re going to change regulations, then it’s changed for everybody, in my view. This farm is a fair distance away. I sympathize with them, but changing regulations is another thing altogether.

Now, what we’re hoping to do is to revitalize the livestock industry in our area. We have a lot of small acreages that totally went out of business because they had no place to market. They couldn’t…. Even if they had three steers or something and one for them, they didn’t want to kill it themselves. They went out of business. Fences went down; the land doesn’t get used.

We’ve only been in operation a year and a half, and it is picking up. People realize now that they’ve got a place to market. They’ve got a place to get it cut and wrapped now. For our operator, another thing of his mandate is that he’s allowed to buy and sell. No farmer has to sell to him. He doesn’t have to buy anybody’s beef. It is completely between the two parties what kind of a deal they want to make.

D. Routley: Thank you, Hedi. It was a very good presentation. You’re in a unique situation where profit isn’t necessarily the motive.

I have two questions for you. The first one would be…. You’re primarily focused on the cost per animal and not applying anything more than that. You mentioned a ratio of 3 to 1 in carcasses —18 steers and the equivalent of 54 pork. You just triggered something. Are you in a situation where you, in a way, welcome more birds, more hogs, more steer, because the cost is higher to process either one? Should we be focusing on maybe addressing those differently?

Then the other question…. Sorry.

R. Leonard (Chair): Maybe it’ll come to you after she answers.

[11:35 a.m.]

H. Trescher: It is an expensive way to butcher. It’s like making handmade shoes, okay? Because you’re only…. Today is a butchering day. It happens to be. They’re going to be killing six beef. This is the maximum they ever kill at one time. We start slowly, and everybody has to learn. Now we’ve got a good cooler capacity. We built it for the long range. Right now only a small part of it is being used, but it’s there. We could hang that many carcasses, and the beef could be aged.

We do not kill chickens. That would be up to Grant, whether or not he does. There is somebody applying for a class E licence, north of us, for chickens, and Grant sent him a letter that he’s not planning to kill chickens in the near future, so they’re free to get a class E licence.

Again, Cargill can do it a lot cheaper; let’s say that. They go bang, bang, bang, while we kind of kill an animal, hang it up. We have a meat inspector there who looks at things. We do have a demand for local beef. The people are willing to pay a bit of a premium for that. They feel they know where the meat comes from, and it is up to people to do their marketing. Now, some people sell directly to consumers. Ourselves, like my son, we have a cow-calf operation. Today we’re butchering some cows. We’re marketing to restaurants, basically.

D. Routley: In order not to take up too much time from the other members, I’m just going to ask you to confirm this for me. You say you don’t want it relaxed. Would you support a system that increased inspections, perhaps using veterinarians instead of meat inspectors? Would you welcome more inspection?

H. Trescher: All I’m trying to tell you is that we built an abattoir assuming these were the rules, okay? Our point is that it’s got to be viable. If half of the people that are our potential customers are going to butcher under a different system, it kind of cuts into the viability of it. There are abattoirs that are shutting down. It is because we have a very limited market. If it was…. We’re not as big as the Okanagan.

R. Leonard (Chair): We have enough time for one quick question.

I. Paton: This is day 3 of our consultations, and I think we’re starting to hear the same story over and over again. The livestock numbers are going down because there isn’t a place to market them, whether it’s stockyards or whether it’s abattoirs.

When I hear you say that…. Like in other districts, somebody steps up and says: “Okay, let’s make the situation better by building a class A facility,” yet you said that it’s running at 25 percent. That’s the whole problem: when you’ve got a whole bunch of Ds and Es — and, maybe, black-market guys out in the woods that we don’t even know about.

That’s got to be affecting the fact that you’ve spent all the money to create an A-licensed abattoir, yet you’re being competed against by the Ds and Es that aren’t bringing their livestock to your abattoir. So you’re running at 25 percent, and then you hear the stories: “Well, we finally had to shut down because we didn’t have enough livestock coming through.” Does that make sense?

H. Trescher: Yes, except right now. We just started out, and we purposely started out slow, small. I’m a great believer in making mistakes on the small end of things rather than going…. Some of the abattoirs that are starting out are thinking about buying and selling. That is a place where you can lose money really quickly, so we’re staying out of that. We make the producer make his own decisions on whether he buys and sells.

Our abattoir is functioning. We’re happy with what it’s doing. It’s building up. Just to say that we don’t have lack of capacity in our area. There are also abattoirs in Cranbrook and Creston. So it’s not as if…. We felt that for our own producers…. We saw what the situation was, and we did something about it. But we don’t particularly like the thought of being undercut.

R. Leonard (Chair): Well, thank you very much. You have a unique model, and I thank you for sharing that with us today.

[11:40 a.m.]

Now we get to use the technology. We have, on a teleconference, Nechako Valley Cattlemen — Larry Garrett.

L. Garrett: Hello there.

R. Leonard (Chair): Hello, Larry. Welcome. You can start. You have ten minutes to speak. At the end of the ten minutes, there’ll be five minutes for questions from the members of the committee. I’ll let you know.

NECHAKO VALLEY REGIONAL
CATTLEMEN’S ASSOCIATION

L. Garrett: Okay. Well, I’m very involved in the B.C. Cattlemen’s Association. I was actually chairing the LIPC committee when the class D and E licences and the new regs came out, and I’ve kind of watched the evolution of the inspection system. Quite frankly, I don’t think anything D and E is going to really solve any of the problems. I would hate to see a D and E in the Nechako Valley, although there could be applications for it.

I personally have ordered an underground pig for delivery in November. It’ll be killed on somebody’s farm, and it’ll be cut and wrapped somewhere — one of the underground places.

The reason. The complexity of the whole regulation — it’s far more complex than what you’re trying to solve. The main thing that happens, say, in the Nechako Valley is that we have a CFIA inspector who nobody likes.

When you start mixing personalities with business and there’s no flexibility, you get a small-time butcher. He does our cows. We take our cattle live to him, and then he butchers, cuts and wraps them — the full gamut. We use him for our cattle when we want to have beef at home or when we might have an extra one for somebody — not very often.

What happens is you mix all these personalities in. Nobody likes the CFIA inspector. If you get a bit of a wild cow come to the slaughterhouse, it’s got to walk right out, go into his kill box and be killed, and of course, it’s got to have a CFIA tag in it. Otherwise, he sends it home. He does that quite regularly — sends it home. Those cattle instantly go underground somewhere, and a lot of people never go back to the abattoir that we use.

Like I say, I honour the idea of trying to listen to everybody, create more Ds and Es, create some flexibility. But I think the issue is far more complex. There’s absolutely no need to have that tag in that animal at this local slaughterhouse if it’s going to die in the next 24 hours or 12 hours. That’s just overkill on the part of the CFIA. Then that makes people mad, and that also enhances the viability of the underground system, where there is no inspection.

Certainly, we don’t like to see — I don’t like to see — people getting sick. Most of the people in our community that do the underground thing know how to cook food. So you’re not going to see a lot of illness because of poorly prepared food. I like mine well aged, and a little bit of mould is a good sign of a tender piece of meat.

I have your questions in front of me. I’ve probably summarized some stuff that could create some questions. I’ll probably just leave it right there.

R. Leonard (Chair): Okay. We have a question already from Mike.

M. Morris: Good morning, Larry. The answers that you’re looking at here — you don’t want to see any more Ds and Es. What is the answer? What do you have in mind that we can do to mitigate the black market for underground meat?

[11:45 a.m.]

L. Garrett: Well, one of the things I think…. I mean, I know CFIA is federal, and the provincial inspection is different. There has to be some kind of flexibility and some kind of common sense in the CFIA inspection. The CFIA inspector, at least here, is driving everything away, so there needs to be some kind of a communication chain link between somebody with authority in the provincial government that can talk with the CFIA inspectors and come up with some kind of plan that has some flexibility.

Now, I’m also a past board member of the Canadian Cattle Identification Agency. In that, we’ve had numerous meetings with the head people at CFIA in Ottawa. Sure, the regulations are written. The inspectors go out with these written regulations that he’s supposed to follow, and the head guy, Eric Dubai, at CFIA will say there is some flexibility in the system, although it’s not written.

Again, these Ds and Es are not going to solve the personality problems. It’s just going to create more…. Well, it’s going to make it harder for the plant that’s already existing. When the original regulations were implemented, our local plant here spent thousands of dollars getting up to speed so that he could pass all the inspections. Then, of course, he runs a bit hot and cold. Sometimes he doesn’t have anything, and sometimes he’s overworked.

A lot of that’s the ranchers — the way the grass is. The grass is greener in the fall, and you have the fat animals in the fall. It’s hard to feed them to keep them fat through winter so that he can have a bit of a supply that’s a bit flexible.

Does that answer your question?

M. Morris: Yeah. That’s great.

R. Leonard (Chair): Thank you very much. Just out of curiosity — I’m trying to get the context of your comments — what kind of a facility does this CFIA inspector operate? Is it a class A provincial, or is he part of a bigger…? With the CFIA, you can market beyond the provincial boundaries, right?

L. Garrett: The CFIA inspector does not operate the plant. He only inspects the plant. It’s a provincial plant. It’s not a federally inspected plant, but the CFIA inspector is there.

It’s an A. He slaughters and cuts and wraps, so he’s an A and B approved plant. But the CFIA inspector is there primarily, I guess, to check on the traceability.

R. Leonard (Chair): Okay. Thank you. It’s a question for us to wrap our heads around, because yesterday we had an abattoir who actually had a CFIA licence.

Donna has a question or a comment.

D. Barnett: Larry, just for clarification. This is Donna Barnett here. I believe you’ve got the inspector that I had in the Chilcotin, so I completely understand.

The abattoirs are basically…. The health inspector inspects the abattoir — right? — and the CFIA inspects the animal health. Just for clarification.

L. Garrett: Well, that’s true. You’re absolutely right. The CFIA inspector inspects the traceability, checks the animal that it’s healthy. Once it goes through a certain stage of the plant, then the health inspector takes over. You’re quite right.

R. Leonard (Chair): Okay, thank you very much. There’s no further questions, so thank you for taking the time to call in and share your experiences with us, Larry.

Next up we have Marie Kohlman.

MARIE KOHLMAN

M. Kohlman: Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. I’ll say right off the bat — no pun intended — I’m a fish out of water in your presence.

[11:50 a.m.]

My name is Marie Kohlman, and I’m a resident of Meadowbrook, which is a rural area north of Kimberley city limits. Thank you for giving me the opportunity to speak to you today.

The platform of my presentation is to bring attention to the inappropriateness of having a class A abattoir in a residential neighbourhood. Should my demeanour change during my presentation, anyway, please do not take it personally. This is a very close-to-my-heart issue, and it’s very upsetting.

My husband and I purchased property in Meadowbrook 20 years ago. We liked the area. It was quiet, no traffic, with birds, wildlife and fresh air and away from our business in town. A part of the historic McGinty Trail runs alongside the length of our property — to us, a very idyllic and precious place.

A number of years ago the Gwinners purchased the property which, of course, is where the abattoir of discussion is now located. In the early stages of their arrival, we were informed — and upon reflection, it was exactly that; informed, not asked — that the Gwinners were going to develop a butcher shop in the building that the previous owner had used as a mechanics shop.

There was some opposition in the neighbourhood to that shop because of bad smells, smells attracting predators and an increase in traffic. However, that opposition was totally ignored, I suppose, because it only came from one individual. We personally thought it was very cool to be able to shop next door.

Time progressed, and the butcher shop business grew. I myself worked a day for them for free, as I felt they could use an extra hand as they were behind in production, due to a late delivery of product.

Because of the growth and success of the butcher shop, traffic had increased dramatically on our little country road, and it also created an increase of biological garbage, which in the warmer months created quite a stink. This was problematic for Ilona Schaffer, a neighbour right beside the shop to the east. The smell of rotten and putrid meat in the dumpster was unbearable in the summer, as it was right outside her bedroom window. She and her little dog felt unsafe on our road because of the traffic and the speed at which people travelled.

Also, Ilona had heard that there was going to be an abattoir built next door. I only found this out about a year after she moved away. She folded up her tent and sold her place to the Gwinners, as there were no other offers forthcoming. Only as I was creating my notes did I understand that the Gwinners’ intention from the beginning was to create an abattoir on that property.

I’ll be the first to admit my ignorance in the sense of what an abattoir really is. A few times over the years, there was reference to an abattoir. I did ask Uwe, just in conversation as a neighbour: “Why did you choose Meadowbrook to live?” He replied: “There were too many rules and regulations in Germany to have an abattoir.” So they came to Canada.

Still, the light did not go for me, and being a polite Canadian ingrained not to meddle in other people’s business, I didn’t pry. Bigger changes on their property ensued: digging at the back of the shop; guard dogs — supposedly against animals, not people; pavement in front for additional parking; and heavy-duty cattle enclosures installed. This is a small home-based business?

It was only at an APC meeting sometime in 2016 when Director Walter mentioned that Ian Johnson “was crying again” — those were her words — about the noise of the slaughtering at the abattoir across the street. What was going on over there? I was managing three jobs at the time. I’d leave for work at eight in the morning and sometimes be home after six, past the hours of normal work hours for that business.

The Johnsons are the elderly couple who have resided in their Meadowbrook home for the past 40 years. It is 63 metres from their front door to the doors of the abattoir. They have a lovely yard and a beautiful and bountiful garden. They had been subjected to seeing cows being shot and killed at the side of the meat shop, put on a hoist where they hang for 50 minutes or so to bleed out, twitching all the while.

The animals were then brought around to the front of the shop on the tractor that has a fork-like lift attachment. There they were gaffed on a hook and hung in the shop at the front, where they were skinned and gutted. This was in plain view to anyone passing by, as the big door was always open. Sometimes there would be blood running down the parking lot to the road.

[11:55 a.m.]

Now, what Director Walter was referring to with Ian’s crying is the following specific event. On August 29, 2016, a trailer with 27 lambs and sheep was brought to the abattoir. Between being freshly separated from their mothers and being left in the trailer overnight, their bawling was quite frantic. During the next day’s slaughtering, over a six-hour period, the distress calls only increased as each lamb was killed one by one. This had been the third slaughtering in our neighbourhood within a few weeks’ time.

This event was extremely stressful to Hanna, 72, and Ian, 78. They were told by the Gwinners that if they didn’t like the sights and sounds of their business, they should just stay in the house and not look out the windows.

How did this all come to pass without consultation to affected neighbours? There was nothing posted in the newspaper, no letters distributed to adjoining and adjacent neighbours, no community or town hall meeting — nothing. The Johnsons and I have learned that our property values will decrease because of the stigma of having a kill floor next door. We don’t exactly know how much, but we do know we will definitely be impacted.

My husband and I do not have a pension coming, but we will be relying on the sale of our property for our later years. We are decent people. We pay our taxes and have been and still are valuable citizens in our community. Why have we been so disrespected? What is it that we’ve done to deserve this?

There’s a community in RDCK who are currently battling the same situation. Their regional district knew about the application because a proponent applied for a change in zoning through the RDCK. The community of Beasley had at least the support of their RDCK and are currently having their concerns addressed, as far as I know to this point.

How did that not happen for us in Meadowbrook? It seems to me that this is the crux of the problem. Why didn’t the Gwinners need to follow due process and first apply for a change in zoning before the abattoir was permitted and before changes were made to the business to fit the abattoir requirements? The whole process seemed to occur backwards for us.

You can appreciate our frustration with both local and provincial governments for seeming to operate surreptitiously with this matter. We also believe that there has been zero transparency and zero accountability to our community by allowing a slaughterhouse in a residential neighbourhood without consultation to those affected.

As stated by Director Walter, this is how it came down. One day somebody from the Ministry of Agriculture in Cranbrook phoned the RDEK and asked if the business of an abattoir was prohibited in a residential neighbourhood or not. Apparently, abattoirs are on the list of the businesses in the middle, neither accepted nor prohibited. There was no written data to support that phone call, or so we’re told, and from that, a permit was granted from the provincial government to license a class A abattoir on Thomason Road — a residential neighbourhood.

We did find out later who answered that call, but we’re told that if the receptionist at the RDEK had answered the question, the process would have been the same. How could it go from a small, home-based business to a class A slaughterhouse with no public input? To this day, the property is still zoned for a small hobby farm. Furthermore, they are allowed to have a feedlot on their property. They have eight acres on one property.

The past couple of years have left our neighbourhood emotionally divided. Driving home past the Gwinners is particularly unpleasant, as we are no longer on speaking terms, to say the least. Hanna Johnson has been so traumatized, she doesn’t like to go out if the Gwinners are slaughtering. Work on their wondrous garden is no longer a pleasure for them, and slaughter days are a nightmare for Hanna.

[12:00 p.m.]

A friend asked Hanna: “Aren’t things better now that there’s a soundproof kill room?” Apparently — this is the answer — pigs squeal quite loudly when they’re under stress.

What are we looking for? We would like your help in telling our story, sharing our story and perhaps supporting our recommendations. I can submit this to you after, as I’m at the end of my time.

Thank you for listening to our side of the story.

R. Leonard (Chair): Thank you very much. Just for clarification, on the issue of zoning, that is a regional district jurisdiction. But the issues that you’re raising about how abattoirs are functioning is something that, certainly, we can take….

M. Kohlman: I understand that, but you see, he didn’t go to the regional district originally to get the permission to rezone. That’s the problem. They didn’t do it the proper way.

D. Barnett: Thank you for your presentation. I would certainly be very interested in hearing a little more about how this came about. I was mayor of a municipality and on a regional district for 17 years, and zoning is very restrictive. Normally, processes are in place to deal with zoning issues as zoning changes, particularly in residential neighbourhoods, so I find this very interesting. I think that I would like to, if possible, discuss this with you a little further, just to see what the process did. That’s where the issue is. It’s not with the meat inspection; it’s with the zoning and the process. I’d like to give you my card.

M. Kohlman: I would really appreciate that, Ms. Barnett. I don’t know that I can even answer that, as we weren’t informed of any process during the whole giving of a class A licence. I don’t know. That’s our question. We seem to get the runaround between the regional district and the Department of Agriculture. Nobody wants to answer the question.

D. Barnett: I think the answer has to come through the zoning process.

R. Leonard (Chair): Yes, that’s what I was saying. It’s very difficult to distinguish jurisdictions and who’s responsible for what, but the issue of zoning is definitely in the hands of local government. But as I say, the issue of what you have described in terms of how the operation of the abattoir is undertaken is something that we can look at.

I. Paton: Just a quick question. Your neighbours who are doing this — do they have a farm as well? Do they raise their own livestock as well, across…?

M. Kohlman: You mean the Gwinners?

I. Paton: The Gwinners, yes.

M. Kohlman: They have their own livestock as well.

I. Paton: Roughly how many acres would they have?

M. Kohlman: They have an eight-acre parcel. And when they purchased Ilona Schaffer’s parcel…. They have another five. They are two separate parcels.

I. Paton: Okay. So they do raise some of their own livestock and kill and slaughter the herd — slaughter and cut-and-wrap them as well.

M. Kohlman: Yes.

I. Paton: How many days a week do you figure they run their slaughterhouse?

M. Kohlman: I think they’ve been granted 35 days a year. I’m not sure. I can find that out for you. I don’t know if they were granted 60 or 35 days a year.

I. Paton: No, I just thought roughly, how many days a week do you put up with…?

M. Kohlman: Rats. That’s such a question to ask the Johnsons, who didn’t want to be here. I wouldn’t say it was weekly. Maybe a couple of times a month. I don’t know; it depends — time of year….

J. Tegart (Deputy Chair): I would just like to say thank you for coming, because probably you questioned whether this was our mandate or not. It’s difficult when you’re having issues with neighbours, and it’s hard to get answers. As much as it may be a zoning issue with the regional district, it brings to mind for us, when we’re talking about abattoirs, what the rules and regulations are around where they’re located and if they’re consistent throughout the province.

That’s good information for us. Probably not too helpful for you, but I really appreciate you taking the time to let us know what you’re experiencing in your area. I wish we had an answer.

[12:05 p.m.]

M. Kohlman: You know, sitting here for a few minutes listening to the others, I understand the need, since the rules have changed for the farmers. I understand that. However, there’s a right place and a wrong place. I feel it’s the wrong place.

D. Routley: There’s often conflict between agricultural industry and local residential. I did a bicycle race in the Fraser Valley years and years ago, and every lap we went around, there was a big sign: “Get rid of the pig farm.” But those are people who had moved when the pig farm was already there. This is a little bit different — definitely different, where you were there first. They were there, but you had come before the operation that you’re upset with.

You also point out to us the difficulties of the layers of jurisdiction because of the zoning issue that has been pointed out and our responsibility around the operations — perhaps the licensing — and then the superseding federal regulations for that particular operation.

We can only address the pieces that we’re responsible for, and you mentioned some practice problems that you think you’ve detected. I don’t know whether they’re required to keep the doors shut or what requirements there are to contain these problems. Have you taken that up with the inspectors?

M. Kohlman: No. I’ll clarify that they did go to the regional district to ask for a variance to build…. They didn’t have a kill room, initially. They did go to the regional district, asked for a variance so they could add on the kill room, which is theoretically soundproof. They built a fence. But that doesn’t change the fact that it’s still there. There is a stigma attached to that.

D. Routley: Can I follow up very quickly?

R. Leonard (Chair): Okay.

D. Routley: This is a fairly simple question, I think. Do you seek a resolution of this that would be coexisting, so that you could coexist with the plant, or are you seeking more than that?

M. Kohlman: That is one of my, in a perfect world, resolutions. Yes, it’s one of them.

R. Leonard (Chair): Thank you very much for your time. I know it’s a hard topic to bring forward, but you did a great job. I would encourage you to talk to your MLA to just get down to the issue of what kind of direction was given, or — what’s the word? — the involvement of the Ministry of Agriculture in that decision, just to help get some clarity on the process that happened specifically in that instance.

It’s Tom Shypitka, isn’t it? Didn’t we decide earlier…?

M. Kohlman: That’s Cranbrook’s MLA. My MLA is Doug Clovechok.

R. Leonard (Chair): Okay, thank you.

The next person up is Nick Bapty, via teleconference.

Nick, are you on the phone?

N. Bapty: Yes, I am.

R. Leonard (Chair): We’re ready to hear you. You have ten minutes, and then five minutes for questions from the members. Go ahead.

B.C. CATTLEMEN’S ASSOCIATION

N. Bapty: My name is Nick Bapty, and I am one of the many I’m sure you’ll hear from today from the B.C. Cattlemen’s Association. I sit with the livestock industry protection committee. I’m putting forward kind of what our committee has…. We’ve discussed this topic, so I’m phoning in today to give you some of our suggestions or just topics to talk about.

Are there options for changing regulations and policy that could increase livestock production in B.C.? Land stewardship, forage production and utilizing forage effectively to assist in the increase of our herd size. Amendments to the livestock and trespass acts to address fencing that create opportunities for producers to be productive and financially viable. Increased research and development of a feeding sector within British Columbia.

[12:10 p.m.]

Question: processing in B.C. of animals raised in B.C. Strategically consider where various slaughter facilities’ licences would best fit based on economic demands. Implement and encourage more training for processors, including D and E licences, through B.C. abattoirs or university-college programs. Offer assistance to D and E licences who want to transition into A and B licences.

Question: slaughter capacity, especially in rural and remote communities. Strategically consider the amount and types of licences available as the urban population begins to move into areas that are more rural. As rural areas slowly see an increase in population, there will be more interest in licences. Therefore, future economic growth should be considered. In addition to increased populations in rural areas, current livestock producers need to have access to safe slaughter facilities that allow for business growth and food security for the province; need to increase cut-and-wrap facilities to alleviate bottlenecks in processing.

Question: access to B.C. meat for consumers, retailers, restaurants and institutional buyers. Initiate the use of the Buy B.C. Eat Drink Local campaign to entice consumers to source B.C. products. The public is increasingly showing interest in knowing where their food comes from and finding ways to support the local food production. Assist with economic development. Encourage a percentage of B.C. product in government procurement practices.

Question: access to specialized types of slaughter to meet cultural and market-based demands. Animal welfare needs to be paramount, including with cultural slaughter practices. Implement training on animal welfare and human safety throughout all licences. Implement strict regulations that minimize opportunities for black market meat sales.

Question: standards for food safety and the humane treatment of animals. Stringent regulations that are enforced by the Ministry of Agriculture. Without strict regulations, inhumane treatment of animals preslaughter and during the slaughter process only increase the distrust by the public. Regulations and standard designs to keep the public safe and healthy. Routine monitoring of food safety and humane slaughter practices at D and E licences — i.e., annual on-farm audits and video monitoring for remote locations.

How can we access the training and development — to be improved in order to support the meat production sector — needed for skilled workers? Increased training and education is always paramount to the British Columbia Cattlemen’s Association. With the public being further removed from agricultural production and practice and a growing trend of urban dwellers moving rurally to help minimize the cost of living, education on how to correctly and humanely slaughter animals is extremely important to the BCCA.

Ensuring that new and existing processing facilities and licences are properly trained and educated should be a major focus in any updated regulations, including continuing education — particularly as new research presents more humane slaughter opportunities, which should also be considered in updated regulations.

Are the regulations with respect to the provincial meat production — including those under the authority of the Ministry of Agriculture, the Ministry of Health and the regional health authorities — clear and effective?

BCCA would encourage that all provincial licences be regulated by one governing body, which is the Ministry of Agriculture. Having all licences under one governing body would assist in effective food safety and animal welfare, consistent quality of meat products entering the market and effective traceability programs, all of which would assist in continuing to build public trust.

How can the provincial inspection system more effectively align with the federal meat inspection system in order to strengthen B.C.’s meat production, including the licensing of slaughter facilities? The federal government is responsible for licensing slaughter facilities that sell products outside of B.C.

[12:15 p.m.]

BCCA would encourage researching whether it would be effective to align provincial inspections with federal, such as a two-tier model with a HACCP portion available to those plants that would find it beneficial. Existing protocols for provincial plants meet the livestock production sector’s requirements.

BCCA thanks the select standing committee for diligently working to improve the meat-processing capacity within British Columbia and would stress that any changes to the licences include: (1) increased training to all processors and producers to assist in public trust and perception and (2) increased on-farm food safety and food handling procedures and programs to assist in public trust and perception.

Proactive regulations that follow sound science and assist with the accountability relating to traceability of livestock from production to consumer, animal welfare and food safety.

Oversight and monitoring of D and E licences to ensure aspects such as animal welfare, food safety, disease management, proper disposal of SRMs, RFID tag retirement and checkoff collection. Overall, make access to slaughter throughout the province to help reduce animal transport times.

Reduce the wait period due to the current lack of cut-and-wrap facilities.

BCCA looks forward to the future discussion on meat processing and production in B.C. and would be happy to provide more feedback if required.

R. Leonard (Chair): Thank you very much. Appreciate that — very pointed.

Any questions from members?

D. Routley: Quite a few people have talked about the shortage of capacity for cut-and-wrap. In a lot of different trades and professions in the province, people are brought to rural communities from bigger centres to give service — maybe doctors, judges, all sorts of people from professions right up to trained trades, skilled trades.

I wonder if there’s been any thought given to that kind of an attraction of people into the area seasonally to do cut-and-wrap, maybe on a contract basis. I don’t know.

N. Bapty: Yeah, I think that was one of our main concerns — the lack of the ability for farm-gate sales. It’s easy for people to go to a place and buy produce and stuff, and people like to buy things that way. So we’re just really encouraging some setup so that we can have the ability to provide a good product to the people. They want to know how it’s produced, and you can tell them — kind of walk them through your operation, show them how you do things and kind of make them feel happy with the product they’re purchasing.

D. Barnett: Thank you for the presentation. Do you have any idea how many class D and Es there are out there that belong to the B.C. Cattlemen’s Association?

N. Bapty: I don’t. Do you mean are they active members of the B.C. Cattlemen’s Association?

D. Barnett: Yes.

N. Bapty: I don’t. I could find out and get it forwarded to you, but I myself do not know.

D. Barnett: That would be very interesting — to see how many As, Bs, Ds and Es actually belong to the Cattlemen’s Association.

N. Bapty: Yeah. I could look into that. What’s the best way to get that information to you?

D. Barnett: It’s if you send it through the Chair of the committee.

N. Bapty: Okay. Of your committee?

D. Barnett: Yes, thank you.

N. Bapty: Okay.

I. Paton: Thank you for your presentation.

If we talk about…. In a perfect world out there, every baby calf that is born should have a tag put in its ear so that it’s traceable throughout its lifespan, wherever it goes — from one farm to the next or through a stockyard — to the point of where it finally gets killed.

[12:20 p.m.]

We had a speaker earlier that felt that the people that aren’t properly tagging their stock on farms are avoiding going to class A and Bs because the inspector won’t allow them if they’re not presented with a proper tag. So then they end up going to a black market or a D or E, where they don’t need to show proof of traceability tags.

How do you feel about that, as the cattlemen’s association, as far as getting people in the business to make sure they are tagging their animals when they’re born?

N. Bapty: Yeah, there’s a huge…. The traceability standards are about to get a lot stricter, which I think is good. I think, as far as that goes, there would be a little bit more increased inspection at those sites to make sure that the proper traceability…. Because those people, technically, should not be able to sell that meat without a proper RFID tag or barcode on those animals.

I. Paton: Correct. Plus, your association is missing out on checkoff dollars if they don’t go through with the tags.

N. Bapty: Oh yeah, for sure. That’s almost part of the black market thing, because under law right now, for us to take animals in, they’re required to have their RFID and their form 3 manifests with them when they go to the facility. So that would be an illegal activity kind of outside of our association, I think.

I. Paton: Correct. Thank you.

R. Leonard (Chair): Thank you very much. I don’t see any further questions. Just to let you know that our staff will be in touch you by email, so we’ll be sure to get that information from you.

N. Bapty: Perfect.

R. Leonard (Chair): Appreciate your presentation and answering all the questions — very helpful. Goodbye.

N. Bapty: Have a good day. Goodbye.

R. Leonard (Chair): Next on our agenda is Mike Malmberg. Welcome.

KOOTENAY LIVESTOCK ASSOCIATION

M. Malmberg: Hello, and thanks very much for the opportunity to present some information before the select standing committee. I appreciate that very much. My comments and topics fall under the Kootenay Livestock Association, on the topics introduced by Faye Street in the earlier presentation.

I have three areas that I would like to touch on. One is the issue in the East Kootenays of farmland that is controlled and managed by conservation organizations or groups. Another item is the opportunity to use boundary adjustments or boundary realignments within the ALR in order to consolidate farmland on ranches and farms. The third point is private versus Crown tenure of agricultural land in the East Kootenay regional district.

A little bit of background on the farmland controlled by conservation groups. Since the early 1970s, there have been many farm operations that have been purchased by conservation groups in the East Kootenays. These lands have been purchased for wildlife purposes, to improve wildlife habitat and maintain natural ecological functions.

Substantially more than ten commercial-scale farm operations have been purchased over the years. I’m not sure precisely how many have been purchased, but there are many of them that have been. Often the purchase is accompanied by a requirement for a conservation covenant to be registered or an easement on additional property that’s owned by the farmers that may be property that the farm actually retained.

This presents a number of issues. The farm community and agricultural production in the area is diminished by the loss of these farming operations. The farmland is no longer used for farming purposes on a permanent basis. The covenants also often restrict, in perpetuity, various activities associated with farming practices, such as development of roads and trails on the property, tree removal, construction of farm buildings, etc. These are often restricted in perpetuity on these covenanted properties.

[12:25 p.m.]

Often there is an inadequate allocation of funds associated with the purchase of the property in order to maintain infrastructure and property management — such as weed control, fence repairs, tree encroachment, water and soil management or erosion on the property, as a natural consequence of fires, floods and water erosion.

Associated water licences are often abandoned or inadequately used, hampering the full usefulness of the agricultural production. Hunting is not allowed, placing an increased burden on wildlife depredation on surrounding properties, which is a big problem in the East Kootenays that I’m sure you’re aware of. Livestock grazing is often removed or substantially diminished from these properties to accommodate wildlife interests and associated habitat needs. Removal of livestock grazing often reduces wild ungulate use on the conservation properties as well, which increases wildlife depredation pressures on surrounding farms.

There’s a number of very large and long-term research projects that have been ongoing in the U.S. for a number of decades, one in Bridge Creek, Oregon, and another one in Placer Mountain, where they’ve witnessed and researched situations where livestock have been removed from rangeland areas. The subsequent impact is also the abandonment of those same grazing areas by wildlife, because livestock are no longer conditioning the forage and keeping the stubble and aftermath graze so that it’s palatable and accessible by wildlife.

If the Agricultural Land Commission reviews restrictive covenants on the associated properties, they are viewed in-house in Burnaby, with little or no knowledge of the local agricultural issues and without knowledge or involvement of the local agricultural community.

A suggested action is that the government review the conservation purchases and conservation covenants of the farmland in East Kootenays, focusing on the current uses of the properties and the impacts on agriculture in the area. Armed with this information, we may identify steps that could be taken to address and mitigate undesirable impacts and consequences.

On the topic of encouraging and supporting farmers to use agricultural parcel boundary adjustment provisions to consolidate farmland within the ALR. Most farmers within the more extensive farming areas of British Columbia have several adjacent lots or parcels of land that constitute their farming holdings. Within these parcels, there’s often a mixture of arable and other classes of farmland that are critical to the farm operation, as well as land that is not significant or critical to the farm operation or is not farmable.

Boundary adjustments among the farm parcels can be an important tool to consolidate the land that is critical to the farm operation. This tool can separate the land important to the farm operation into distinct, separate parcels, thus consolidating the farmland into parcels distinct from parcels that are not critical to the operation of the farm. When the ranch or farm is eventually sold or transferred to succeeding generations of farmers, the agricultural land base that is of importance to farm operations will remain consolidated and intact. The land that is not significant to the farm operation can be consolidated into different parcels, which, if sold separately, will not negatively impact the farming operation.

This type of consolidation is extremely important to the future of agriculture in extensive farming areas of British Columbia. It can also play a major role in succession planning or revenue procurement for the current farming generation.

[12:30 p.m.]

Few farmers are aware of this important provision or the ways that this tool could be used to create a consolidated farm land base for future farm generations. A large portion of the farm land base will be changing hands within the next decade or two. Most of those farmers are my age or older. We cannot afford to miss this opportunity to consolidate and secure our farming land base and also assist many of the current generation of farmers in accomplishing some of their succession goals, such as retirement or provision of land parcels to both farming and non-farming family members.

Currently, as farms are sold or passed on through succession, the separate parcels are often sold or passed on to different landowners. When this happens, the opportunity to consolidate the farmland that now presents itself will be lost. Several opportunities have been lost in this community alone in just the past few months. Those opportunities will not return.

In the East Kootenays farm and ranch operations of a commercial scale commonly have many parcels of land. I think they would vary from the odd occasion when those operations have only one parcel of land. In most cases, there are several parcels of land that constitute the farm base. They can run up into the 20s and, quite commonly — I don’t know what the average would be, but probably, you know, four to six parcels of land constitute that farming operation.

The amount of arable lands within those parcels is, perhaps, half the land or maybe two thirds of the land. A portion of the land is farmland, and it has within it the forage crop production, the fields and farmable land, but that farmable land is often spread within the boundaries of several parcels. So consolidating that farmland into one parcel would preserve its utility as a farm into the future.

I guess that’s, basically, what my plea is — to try to do that while we still have time.

The aspirations of the farm families presently involved and the opportunity for the most valuable farmland to be preserved as a consolidated entity for agriculture and future generations of farmers will both be lost if boundary adjustment provisions are not acted on before the sale or dispersal of a farm.

R. Leonard (Chair): Excuse me. Sorry. I haven’t been watching the time. We’ll give you 30 seconds to wrap up.

M. Malmberg: Okay. Just in conclusion, then, we need to explore this exciting and timely opportunity. We need to assist and encourage its use by the farming community. This may be the single greatest opportunity to consolidate and secure our farm land base in British Columbia, preserving it for its efficient and effective use by farm businesses in the future.

Once the individual parcels are sold or bequeathed to separate owners, it will be very difficult or extremely unlikely that the farmable portions of the amalgamated lots can be put back together in a consolidated and efficient farm operation.

R. Leonard (Chair): Thank you very much for your presentation. I’ll see if anybody has any questions.

I just wanted to ask if you have made this presentation to the ALR revitalization advisory committee that was going through the province a couple of months back.

M. Malmberg: No, I haven’t presented that information to that committee. I have spoken with the Agricultural Land Commission members about this idea on one or two occasions in the past.

R. Leonard (Chair): Okay, thank you very much.

Any questions?

I. Paton: Thank you, Mike, for your presentation.

First of all, it’s kind of neat for this committee that…. Even though we’re here to talk about abattoirs and processing, it was nice to get a comment about some other issues around agriculture.

[12:35 p.m.]

I totally understand where you’re coming from. You know, historically, farmers are land-rich and cash-poor. We’re an example, on our farm in Delta. It’s worth a lot of money, but half the time we don’t have enough money to build a new fence or buy a new tractor. All your money is tied up in your farm. So I can see where….

You’ve got an example of a guy in this area, say, that owns 200 acres, but five of it is more of a rock pile along the side of a lake. And some doctor from Calgary comes out and says: “I’d like to build a house there.” Separating off that five acres gives you some cash to continue on with the actual farming of the good land of your farm.

I think that’s where you’re coming from, which kind of makes sense in some respects. I mean, it’s not all perfect land, even though it’s in the ALR.

The other comment. I think some of these covenants need to go before the land commission. So when the Nature Trust or Ducks Unlimited or somebody buys a big portion of farmland, there has to be an agreement by the land commission that hunting is still allowed on that land to do predator control for the guys that have livestock in and around that piece of land that’s been purchased, and also grazing rights.

I mean, just because you’re Ducks Unlimited or whatever, you can’t just suddenly say: “Okay, there’s no more grazing of livestock on that land.” Agricultural land has to stay agricultural land, no matter who owns it.

M. Malmberg: Yes. I would hope that would be the case, but unfortunately, it’s not. The Agricultural Land Commission used to review those covenants, but they did it in-house in Burnaby. They are not aware of the particular issues and instances of agriculture in this area, where we have ex­treme­ly high levels, crippling levels, of depredation from neigh­bouring farms and all of the other nuances with agriculture that’s done here. It’s kind of an operation that’s done in-house. I’m not even sure if they still review those covenants.

Also, the covenants are usually applied to land that’s still owned by the farm operator, and there are no restrictions on the land that’s purchased by the conservation agency, other than the regular. It would have to be a separate parcel of land. The regular requirements that prevail with respect to the agricultural land reserve still would apply to the pieces that are purchased.

But part of the purchase price is designed to enable them to put a covenant on the remaining different parcels of land.

R. Leonard (Chair): Thank you for that.

Donna. One last quick question, because we’re getting beyond our time here.

D. Barnett: It’s a quick question.

When you’re talking about ranches and farms that are in many titles, you’d like to see them all put into one title?

M. Malmberg: Well, no. What I’d like to see done is…. There’s a provision in the Agricultural Land Commission Act that enables parcels that are adjacent under one ownership to do a realignment of those boundaries.

Say, for example, maybe a ranch consisted of four different properties that were all adjacent to each other, but the arable land may be touching into all four of those properties. What I’m talking about is the provision of boundary readjustment that would enable that property owner to realign those four lot boundaries into one large boundary that consolidated all of the important farmland and left the other three parcels separately.

When the land is eventually transferred to another owner, through a sale or through whatever succession plan or whatever means, the farmland would remain consolidated in one parcel. The other three parcels would be made up of land that does not have farming utility.

D. Barnett: So you could still have separate titles.

M. Malmberg: You would have the same number of separate titles. You can’t change the number of separate titles. You’d still have four separate titles. You’d simply consolidate the agricultural land into one large title so that it maintains the integrity of that farm operation into the future. Otherwise….

R. Leonard (Chair): Okay. Thank you very much. I think you explained yourself pretty well. I do appreciate you bringing these points forward. I’ll probably be passing them along, as well, to that other committee. Thank you for your time.

We’ll call up Gerald Brinders now. Thank you for joining us today. You can begin any time.

[12:40 p.m.]

GERALD BRINDERS

G. Brinders: Thank you, all you beautiful people.

Gerald Brinders. I’m operating a small farm. I’m right in the city of Cranbrook and surrounded by it, so I have to be exceptionally careful with what I do — on the golf course as well. Just to give a little smile, I used to paint stripes on my ram to look like a zebra so that it’s nice for the people playing golf.

Anyhow, I was responsible for, with the government, way back in 2006, when they consulted me with…. I did put an application to build a slaughterhouse on my property, with sheep, and I dealt with chickens and eggs and stuff.

I was encouraged then…. To cut a long story short, there was a program — the MTAP, meat transition assistance program. It took them one year to get me on board because of my age. I’m 72 this year, but when I started, I was just about going on pension. So I told them I’m very careful what I have to get involved in, and they assured me: “No, you will be protected if you invest.”

It was an investment program, and I think there were 54 people — farmers and abattoir operators at the time — that got incorporated with this or joined in with the government. I did, and it took a year for me to really get into it.

Anyhow, I designed the mobile slaughter unit. They had an existing one that they tried to get in 2004. That one only got licensed in 2011. I started in 2007, and by 2008, the first one was completed, working only nighttime because I had to look after a very sick wife — full-time care for her. So it was quite a task.

I’m a designer and fabricator and so forth. I worked very closely with the Centre for Disease Control, BCCDC, and with the Canadian Food Inspection Agency, because this was the first prototype. It’s on the Internet, on Brinders MPU, for mobile poultry unit.

Today I’m not doing it anymore. I was forced out of it by the government’s decisions with the D and the E licence. That has caused us a lot of headaches and problems because we couldn’t compete with people slaughtering in their backyards. They did not have any commitments to labour that involved people working for them. There are many factors involved.

I had a lot of conference meetings with the government pertaining to these D and E licences and the damages done to our business. Not only to mine, but most of those who signed on to this program for the mobile units ended up with the same issue.

It’s only recently that the B.C. Association of Abattoirs contacted me. They wanted the information that I have because I’ve been to court four times with the government, and I proved their incompetence, the B.C. government. I’ve got it here. I don’t know if I should bore you with all this stuff, but I’ve got stacks of information. I kept all my records. All my teleconferences were recorded.

To cut a long story short — I don’t want to bore you with it — we’ve got a serious problem with the D and E licence, or on-farm licence or unlicensed slaughter facilities.

I was infected with H. pylori. I don’t know how many of you know about H. pylori. Anybody know about H. pylori? One person. I did my research. I’m also a certified nurse in doing dialysis and so forth.

I’m also serving my Muslim and Jewish communities with ritual slaughter. I’ve got my butcher here, my abattoir operator. He knows. He does those services for me. All my products I sell, I always want to be sure my clients and customers get the top end of our services, and health is more important to me.

[12:45 p.m.]

I was forced to shut down my businesses — well, the slaughter business — because of the competition. We can’t handle that. You can’t deal with people that are selling a product for a quarter the price that we have to sell it for. So during the process, I ended up with having…. It led to a court case between myself and the Ministry of Health. It ended up that I had to subpoena Ida Chong, the B.C. Food Processors, and I had to subpoena Ron Duffell. He was the Minister of Healthy Living and Sport.

This thing has been changing so much with this D and E licence from one department to another department. But Centre for Disease Control, about which I want to make a recommendation, did a fantastic job, when it comes to: “You want to start a business, you do it right. If you can’t do it right, get out.” Follow the rules, safety rules, and that was always my idea of things on food products.

We did our best and proved to the government that this was the right way to go. The small live slaughter units were the solution to our problems, to farmers that want to slaughter on their property, regardless what region they are in. We proved the flexibility of these mobile units.

Unfortunately, the accountant for the government, the MTAP group, Gerry Dragomir, made it very clear and simple. When they found that there was a very serious problem, the government did not invest enough money in this program. They expected that those participants who invested money should be doing most of everything — labour, materials, and so forth. There was a contract on that, and it was an investment contract.

The sad part is that before I signed my final contract with the first unit that I built, they had already discussed that in the Legislative Assembly — that they’re going to change the rules, because they’ve had so much pressure by small farmers. We have the right to slaughter without inspection.

Of course, that is what happened. They granted them these D and E licences and went totally contrary to the agreements that we had with this government on that investment contract. There were certain regulations on that, and our government violated that.

Of course, we ended up in court. They brought false charges against me, because they got sick and tired of listening to me. It was a CFIA inspector that came and warned me in a meeting with the Ministry of Health and so forth: “Gerry, they’re going to kick your ass.”

That’s what they tried to do. I ended up in court. Couldn’t get a lawyer. Went to court four times and won my case against them.

Mr. Bennett, our former MLA, was very active. From the very beginning, he showed a lot of resentment towards this whole thing about the A and the B slaughter facilities. He was against that. He rather wanted everybody to go the old way. Those were his worlds, so he was very instrumental in the destruction of my business.

All the proof is there. The B.C. Association of Abattoirs are a witness to that. I’ve got the letters that they confirmed, as they did their research.

I would like to encourage this committee…. I do believe there’s a lot of conflict of interest that takes place in people’s lives, whatever we do. Conflict of interest is everywhere.

I’ve spoken to many farmers that don’t even know about this H. pylori bacteria. It’s an age-old bacteria. Eight-five percent of Canadians are infected, particularly in B.C. There was an explosion of it, since 2012-13. I got infected, and it’s one hell of a job getting rid of that.

I don’t know if anybody, if you know about…. Can I just…?

R. Leonard (Chair): Just to let you know, you have one minute left.

If I can just ask one question before you continue, are you currently suing the government? Like, is there a lawsuit in play at the moment?

G. Brinders: Well, I’m contemplating that now. I have to think about it very…. My family wants me just to retire. Take this, write it off as….

R. Leonard (Chair): But you’re not currently engaged in an actual…?

G. Brinders: No, I’m not.

R. Leonard (Chair): Okay, so go ahead, then.

[12:50 p.m.]

G. Brinders: Anyhow, we have a serious outbreak of H. pylori, and a lot has to do with on-farm slaughtering where they do not follow the proper procedure. It takes a split second — dropping your knife and picking it up and putting it in an animal without sterilizing, just hands….

This bacteria is not only in domestic livestock; it’s also in wildlife. Many of our people are suffering and many are dying prematurely because of H. pylori. I would encourage you people to read up on it. I’ve made a few copies. Just a year, in front, you have this office.

By the way, this is the stuff that comes into…. It looks like it’s been slaughtered with a chainsaw. It comes into the butcher shops where they have to pack and wrap for some of these farms. This is very discouraging. I’ll give you copies of it.

R. Leonard (Chair): Just to let you know, your time is now up, so if you can wrap up very quickly. If you can provide copies to staff, we will get it individually.

G. Brinders: Okay. I’ll leave this stuff with you. Please read through it and protect yourself, because we have a very serious high rate of infection. I do believe….

R. Leonard (Chair): Thank you very much. Let’s see if the committee has any questions for you. We have five minutes for questions from the committee. Has anybody got any questions? No.

Well, thank you very much. I appreciate it. The staff will make sure we receive all of that information. Thank you for your time.

G. Brinders: Please read through it, and you’re going to be very surprised. That’s all I came for, to talk about what’s happening with our health. We’re going to lose our health system.

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

Okay. The next person on the list today is Dale McNamar, and he is by teleconference. Is he on the line now? No. Perhaps while we’re waiting to see if he can make the connection, we’ll go on to Curtis Smith. Is Curtis Smith in the room?

Thank you very much. I appreciate that you’re here a little bit early.

CURTIS SMITH

C. Smith: I’m Curtis Smith. I was with you guys in Castlegar yesterday. I just sat in listening, to see what everybody was saying. I’m from Creston. My wife and I opened a poultry abattoir in the Creston Valley last year. It’s a 2,000-square-foot facility. There are pictures going around there just inside.

We got into it just because we were young in the agricultural community. A farmer who was doing it currently was, again, getting older, and he wanted to get out. We found it would be a good opportunity to get in as young people. We did. We just based our operation off of what was currently there and operational and how we could improve on it to take things forward, rather than just staying in one place. That’s what we came up with.

We worked with the ministry very closely, whether it would be the inspectors…. Then the inspectors go to CFIA or the vets on how we do things or improve on things as well. That’s just how we came to be.

On the side, as well, we raise our own poultry. We’re raising more this year than what we did the last two years.

December 2016 was our first kill date. I built the facility myself. We had contractors come and do concrete and electrical and roofing, but then everything else, I did myself.

[12:55 p.m.]

We wanted to make it so we could accommodate everybody, whether it’s farmers who were processing or raising five birds or raising 300 birds, and just tried to schedule everybody in on certain days. Whether they had 40 birds to us, we’d try just to make a full day of it. Again, then people could grow in the future as well.

What we were most surprised about, with the product that was coming in, was the way the product was, looked and appeared. You’d think poultry…. Like you see chickens in the stores, and see them on the shelf. They’re nice-looking birds.

I had emailed other pictures, as well, of what had come in. I’m not saying everything was like that, but if that’s what was coming in the door to an inspected facility, what is going through as an uninspected meat? With some of the stuff that we’d seen, we were just blown away by it. We almost didn’t want to put our sticker on — with some of the birds that came in through the door — saying that they were processed here and that we released them out to the public to be consumed.

Again, we work closely with CFIA, outside of the ministry, and the vets as well, trying to better the producers’ situation. There wasn’t one producer that came and picked up their birds at the end of the day that we never talked to or discussed what the inspector found and how they can better it on their end — what they needed to change or should change or have to change to just produce a better product to go out to the general public.

As far as inspection being introduced and the way it was before the inspection, I have nothing to say on that, because we weren’t involved in that. We just sort of took in stride what was in place at the time and did our best to work with the ministry and everyone else in the regional district on how things should be and how we could change, again, to make it better for everybody in a community as a whole.

We process birds from people as far away as Cranbrook here, out the other side of Cranbrook to Wardner, and stretch as far the other way above the pass to Slocan Valley into Passmore there. We had a very wide range for the first year we did, and it’s looking like this year it’s going to be again.

The discussion about the Ds and Es, on whether they should be allowed. Again, going back to what we’ve seen come in that was coming to an inspected facility, I’d be afraid of what was going to be sold or be passed through to the public uninspected. I guess time will tell, and we’ll see what you guys decide it would be.

R. Leonard (Chair): Thank you very much for your presentation. Do we have any questions?

N. Simons: Thanks a lot. I appreciate your taking the time to come and speak to us. The question I have is: were you led to believe that there is some effort to reduce the restrictions around D and E or expand their availability?

C. Smith: Just the talk that’s going around. That’s all that we’re going off.

N. Simons: It’s good to hear your perspective. I really appreciate it.

I. Paton: Your photographs are great. It looks like a very nice facility. I take it you’re an A licence?

C. Smith: No, we’re a B facility.

I. Paton: Okay. I take it that the birds you’re talking about and that are coming in are just like underfed or just in very poor condition.

C. Smith: Yeah, it ranged from poor condition or internal issues to what they were being fed or how they were being fed, nutrition-wise. We’ve seen a lot of stuff — we did — that we were shocked to see.

I. Paton: You’ve got some of your own birds that you’re raising, so you market to some of the local butcher shops and grocery stores in and around this area?

[1:00 p.m.]

C. Smith: We looked into it. But in order to sell, from our standpoint, to a grocery store and compete against where they’re getting birds from — down at the coast there, and they’re bringing them up — that profit margin and what we’d have to mark them at would be just too low.

My wife uses Facebook for a lot of advertising, and we have no issue getting rid of them. She’ll post them. We have a Chrome site. We’ll have 150 birds, and in two weeks we don’t have any of them left.

I. Paton: Just quickly, last question. Each day that you do your killing for the birds, the provincial inspector is there?

C. Smith: That is correct. Yes, she is there. Last year and into this year we weren’t doing any more than 150, because we didn’t have the manpower. This year we’re trying to push, working with KES in town, Kootenay Employment Services, in getting more employees. That is faring very well. We’re going to try upping our numbers to 300 birds a day, which makes it more viable to the bigger producers as well. That seems to be, right now, the most a producer raises in the valley at one time in one batch, so it makes it simpler for them as well, not having to raise them longer than they need to.

D. Barnett: These birds that come in and that you’re concerned about, which are really not up to what you think a bird should be for a kill…. Do these inspectors inspect all these birds? Do they reject many of them?

C. Smith: Oh yeah. She inspects every bird that goes through our place. She stands in line with the workers that are in there.

Oh, your question — reject. She talks about how she’s been in other plants that do 3,000 birds or 10,000 birds a day and of how many they get rid of, off line. There might not be any.

We’ll do 150 birds for one producer in a day. I’m not saying that this is in every batch, but we’ve had up to, in some cases, six or seven birds get condemned out of that batch — which, in her mind, is a high number, considering that they go to other plants that process bigger numbers a day and nothing gets trimmed. Maybe not nothing, but very little gets trimmed, compared to the amount that gets trimmed in our facility.

J. Tegart (Deputy Chair): Thanks, Curtis. Thanks for being there yesterday and today. It’s interesting to hear the presentations. Do you think that part of your role is to help people realize what’s happening with their birds and how to improve their quality of product?

C. Smith: That’s what we try to do: work with everybody who comes in. Not just, “Here are your birds,” at the end of the day. “Have fun.”

J. Tegart (Deputy Chair): Did you think that was going to be your role when you took on the abattoir?

C. Smith: No, not necessarily. It wasn’t. Being who we are and what we operate, I felt that there was a need to do it, to just be informed and let the producer be informed as well.

D. Routley: I just want to congratulate you for that. I think it’s a really good approach.

R. Leonard (Chair): I’d have a question. When you say that there are six or seven out of 150 that are condemned, what happens to those birds? We’ve heard about birds going off and going into the underground economy.

C. Smith: Those birds, they hit…. You can see, in the pictures there, there’s the shack line and the trough underneath the shackles. That’s where all the offal goes into throughout the day.

R. Leonard (Chair): So you do slaughter them.

C. Smith: Yeah, because each bird does have to be inspected, regardless of if it’s alive or dead when it shows up. If it’s rejected on the line, condemned on the line, it hits that trough, and nothing more gets done with it. It goes to the compost pile. It does not hit the public market. It does not.

[1:05 p.m.]

R. Leonard (Chair): I appreciate that clarification. Thank you very much for your perseverance and coming in and making this presentation.

Dale McNamar, can you hear us on the phone?

D. McNamar: I can hear you if you can hear me, yup.

R. Leonard (Chair): I’m not sure where you’re calling from, but maybe you can tell us that. Please feel welcome.

KOOTENAY NATURAL MEATS

D. McNamar: All right. I would have liked to be there, but life is a little busy on the farm, so I just couldn’t pry myself away. So far the topics sound very interesting.

A little bit of my history. We currently operate as Kootenay Natural Meats. We produce beef, lamb, pork, chicken, turkey, rabbit. Curtis does all of our chicken and turkey slaughter at this point.

Prior to that, when the new regulations came out, I guess, in 2007, I and a partner decided that we wanted to grow chickens for consumers. In doing so, we got on board with Gerry Brinders, who spoke earlier, and purchased our mobile unit. Prior to that, we were using his. He was bringing it down to Creston. We participated in his first couple of kills and running that unit and decided, when he sold his first unit, that he would build us another unit. We operated that for approximately seven years, selling it last year just due to the fact I wanted to concentrate on raising more birds and growing our farm and not necessarily killing them anymore.

A little bit on what Curtis was saying about the abattoirs. In those seven years, we killed approximately 35,000 chickens. Some of them were ours, but the majority were from other farms. Like Curtis, we’ve seen a lot of things as well.

That leads us to, I guess, the point of this whole thing. When original regulations came into effect in B.C., food safety and public safety was number one. I think everybody listening needs to realize that that’s what this is about. This wasn’t about saying: “We used to do it like this, so we should be allowed to do it like this.” I used to pay 25 to 40 cents for diesel. I would love to go back that way; I know I’m not going to be able to. There are a lot of people that think we should be able to go back to the way it used to be.

When the regulations were put in place in B.C., which was one of the last provinces to get regulated properly, it was about food safety and human safety. I feel there is a will from the public, and maybe even a little bit of government, that we need to slack off on the inspection and put more Ds and Es out there, because people want it. Well, it wasn’t about what people wanted. This was originally started for what was needed for public health and safety. That’s where it needs to remain.

Like I said, we do beef, lamb, pork, chicken and turkey. I’ll give a little bit of background. Our beef goes to the other abattoir in town. I myself took a cow in. It was time. It was the end of her life. So I took her to the abattoir hoping that she would be, basically, a hamburger candidate, which happens all the time in all these small plants, and big plants. As long as they can walk on and off that truck, they go on the line. This animal was not in that bad shape. She was able to walk. She was fine. In the end, she was condemned, which I was surprised at, but I also went: “Oh well, that’s too bad.”

[1:10 p.m.]

The system that is there now works. What we have in place works. If I, perhaps, may have been that farmer that decided to do this farm kill and/or had an E or a D…. Hanging there, there’s a couple thousand dollars. Now you’re putting that on me, as the farmer, to say: “Do I take the $2,000? Do I put that product into humans, into the food chain? Or do I throw it away because that’s the right thing to do?”

I myself — being involved in the meat inspection from the beginning and owning our own abattoir — see the bigger picture. I myself realize what needs to be condemned and what doesn’t. But does every farmer necessarily have the knowledge that I do? Absolutely not.

A lot of the time, a farmer needs every little bit of money he can get just to feed his family and survive. That’s where I feel we need to stick with what is working. I realize that the overall capacity of abattoirs isn’t maybe the best at this point. For us and our business, being that we have local abattoirs nearby, we are forced to use them. Not that I need to be forced. But we are required to use them, and I wholeheartedly agree that we need a third party there to inspect, to ensure that the quality leaving the abattoir and, thus, the cut-and-wrap shops is quality. That means that you’ve got to keep the fox out of the chicken house. You’ve got to have somebody else looking at it that’s a third party.

Also, to all these people that want a D and an E for their sustainability for their farm, I say that if you want to grow your farm and kill and slaughter more animals, that’s fine. That’s great. There’s a minimum that you have to be required to have. And why are you so scared to have an inspector stand there to watch you do what you do? Why are you trying to hide it?

You should be more than happy to have an inspector there that comes to you free to view the process. Why are you not wanting that? Are you hiding something? That’s how it appears to me, looking from the outside, looking at those people that are fighting inspection so diligently. What are you hiding?

A little bit further on…. For us, all of our farm is sold to consumers, to restaurants throughout the Kootenays, from the Alberta border to just about Kelowna. We’ve got a lot of customers. Most of that is based on farmers markets. We participate in as many farmers markets as we can get to.

This is where, with the Ds and Es and not inspected, we have issues. At these farmers markets, there’s….

R. Leonard (Chair): Sorry. You’re sort of cutting out at this point. Can you just repeat the last couple of sentences?

D. McNamar: Okay, sorry.

R. Leonard (Chair): We got to the fact that you use farmers markets a lot, and then we kind of lost you.

D. McNamar: We use farmers markets a lot. The majority of our customers are either met at…. We meet them as customers at farmers markets, or they’re buying our product at the farmers markets. That’s where we compete with those that maybe do have an E or a D or are just doing plain and simple farm-kills still. They can sometimes be beside us selling a product that is non-inspected.

Now, consumers have been taught, historically, that the government is looking after them, that the food that they’re going to eat is going to be safe. That is from a grocery store and even through the farmers markets. When I can put a stamp on…. All our products have a stamp saying what abattoir they came from, whether it be Curtis’s place or our local Tarzwell’s. That is an insurance to me. So they are taking it for granted that all meat has to be done like that. That is not the case.

[1:15 p.m.]

A very simple thing. This is another big point for me. It would be very simple for either the health authorities or whoever needs to be…. For cut-and-wrap shops, a simple fix to a lot of this is if they are required to simply put a stamp on the package saying: “Not inspected.” Or when we have inspected meat that goes through our cut-and-wrap shop, it is stamped: “Inspected No. XYZ.” I’m not sure if it’s a requirement, but it’s something that we do along with our farm name. We are proud of the fact that it is inspected.

Now, when that cut-and-wrap….

R. Leonard (Chair): Excuse me. You’re starting to cut out again, fade out. Just to let you know, there’s just one more minute. So if we can get you back, we’ll give you another minute.

D. McNamar: Okay.

R. Leonard (Chair): There. That’s better.

D. McNamar: I’ll go back a little bit. It’s important if we can somehow make it necessary that uninspected meat is stamped “uninspected.” For the guy that’s killing three beef on-farm and selling two to his neighbours and keeping one for himself, that neighbour, then, when they see the package, can make the educated choice whether they want to purchase uninspected meat or not.

It’s very simple for an inspection of a farmers market, when the health inspector goes through, to look at the packages and say: “Oh, it is inspected. Oh, this is not inspected; it is not supposed to be here.” Right now it’s a grey market. There is a large grey market. We’re at the tipping point of making…. I feel the rules that have been…. The waters have been muddied, and the rules have been muddied, where people really don’t know what’s required anymore.

I think you guys need to take a firm stand. “These are the rules. This is why they’re there, and it’s for the public’s safety.”

R. Leonard (Chair): Thank you very much for your presentation. I’ll just see now if we have any questions for you. Hopefully, you can still hear us, because you’re starting to fade again.

Any questions? No. Okay.

Well, thank you very much for taking the time to make the presentation to us. We appreciate it.

We have one more presenter now, in person: Randy Reay. Welcome.

KOOTENAY LIVESTOCK ASSOCIATION

R. Reay: Good afternoon, and thank you very much for the opportunity to make a brief presentation here today. I’ve enjoyed listening to much of the discussion. It isn’t often that we get a large group of MLAs coming to our part of the province, so we appreciate that.

My name is Randy Reay, and I am the land use committee chairman for the Kootenay Livestock Association. I have been involved in agriculture all of my life. My wife and I and our eight children are part of a third-generation family operated ranch. I think we are a part of a vanishing breed, and I sincerely hope that this large body of MLAs is genuinely interested in improving the future for an agriculture industry that, I’m sad to say, I believe is kind of on life support.

I was a bit concerned about the scope of your study being so narrow in its focus, but I understand the importance of it. I think that examining ways to increase the capacity and viability of livestock slaughter and processing is of little value if there’s no livestock to slaughter. I’ll be very brief in my comments on that subject, because you’ve heard a lot about that today, I know, and yesterday apparently as well.

We had a couple of gatherings to put some ideas together. I think, for most of us, we believe that the solution is fairly simple. We would very much like to see a return to the farm-gate slaughter practice that existed prior to 2004, when government felt that there was a need to change it to make it safe.

You can’t blame anyone for acting to try to make things safer, but part of our problem, which remains with us today, is none of us were aware of anyone who became ill or died from eating farm-gate beef. None of us are, and I don’t believe, probably, you are either.

[1:20 p.m.]

So it wasn’t broken. It didn’t need to be fixed, but it was. It was tampered with. It was changed dramatically, and that dramatic change to these inspected abattoirs essentially killed the farm-gate sales for agriculture, especially for the beef business.

That was a very important little add-on to help supplement farm incomes. That was extremely important. It was kind of like the Christmas trees of the past, you know. It was something that most ranchers could do and add a little bit to help the bottom line. That has been lost, and none of us are aware of a really good reason for it. So we’d really like to see it return.

I understand how hard it is to go back on something when the general public believes those changes were made all for good, honourable reasons of protecting consumers. But consumers that get ill, mostly, are those who…. We hear about recalls not that infrequently for food that has gone through the inspection process and has caused illness. That didn’t happen on the farm. So I don’t know why we’ve had to pay that price.

I respectfully ask that you folks have a look at why we can’t go back to that system, even though it might seem to some to be a step backwards. I don’t believe it is.

Now, I’ll move on to some issues that I believe you need to hear from us today, and I hope that you’ll act upon those. If you really eat…. We are involved in agriculture — right? — and all of us love to eat. So we’re all part of that.

It was interesting…. Obviously, there are some of you on the panel that have some agricultural background, and that’s refreshing. I know Mrs. Barnett obviously has, and Mr. Paton, so thank you for that. Others may, and I’m just not aware of that background.

Some things I think the province needs to do, and elected MLAs like yourself can make it happen. I don’t think that there’s a reason that this needs to be a partisan issue. A good, healthy agriculture industry is in everybody’s interest.

The first thing, I think, that we would like to see done — it’s an easy thing, and we’ve been asking for it since it was implemented — is to eliminate the carbon tax on farm fuels. No one in agriculture wastes fuel. It’s a huge part of our input costs. So it is hard for us to understand…. I mean, we can’t be food producers without it, and the more efficient we try to become, the more machinery it takes. It seems like we are being punished with a user tax. That would be a significant help if that was reduced. Our ranch fuel costs run between $40,000 and $50,000 a year. That’s a huge cost.

Number 2, we’d like to see the reduction of electricity rates for irrigation. Now, this is a benefit that we enjoyed historically, and then it was taken away. We believe that it needs to be put back.

Electricity is something we have lots of in our province. Here, our agricultural industry was significantly negatively impacted by the Libby dam, which of course is part of the Columbia system, which produces a ton of electricity, not just in our part of the province but in all parts of the province. I think we are the beneficiaries of those big projects, but agriculture was a big loser. Cheaper electricity costs for irrigation would be another simple way to help ranchers improve their viability and their profitability.

As you know, the profit margins for British Columbia ranching operations are pretty small. I believe, in talking with Mike…. In the studies that were done from 2003 to 2013, six of those years, the net farm income for the sort of average 200-cattle operation was a loss, not an income at all. You can’t stay in business forever if that’s the reality.

[1:25 p.m.]

I think we need to do what we can to try to reduce those input costs so that profitability is something that is there. That, obviously, then becomes much more encouraging to our children, to the younger generation, to remain part of agriculture.

No. 3, we’d like you to work together and be very careful on the efforts to remove zone 2 from the agricultural land reserve. This was something that we fought hard for in our area. We’re a long ways from the coast, and of course, you know the old story about how there’s no hope beyond Hope. We believe that zone 2 provided opportunities to do more on-farm activities to help supplement the farm income. That’s important. That’s extremely important.

I mentioned at the beginning that my children will be the fourth generation. I’m the third. But I taught school for 40 years. I just retired last year. I’ve never retired from farming, and I guess I won’t, probably, until I die.

Most agricultural operations in the province require some off-farm income. By making it easier to supplement the farm or ranch income from the property base…. That, as all of you know, is a huge capital cost, agricultural land. To be able to use that for a variety of purposes that help maintain the food production is extremely important.

The decision to change or to do away with the local panels is a huge concern for us — huge concern. We had a couple of very good representatives that were put on the land commission after extensive consultation with our industry — extensive consultation. One of them was then removed, was replaced. The second then resigned because he couldn’t…. He said it took hours to try to deal with one file. It became obvious to him there was no point, so he resigned.

Our sense is that what’s happening is the commission is being sort of filled with people who are going to be in line with what the commission would like to do. We’re concerned that that may not be….

R. Leonard (Chair): Excuse me. Just to let you know that you have 30 seconds.

R. Reay: Thank you. I will conclude, then, by saying we don’t want these things politicized, because that’s what causes people to lose faith in government. So let’s work together. Family farms will become corporate farms if government doesn’t respond in a real and meaningful way, and that would be a travesty for our province.

We’ve met with every Premier and Minister of Agriculture over the last 30 years, I believe, and they’ve all expressed their belief that agriculture in B.C. is important, but most of the requests we have made of government have not been acted upon.

Canadians as a whole, and certainly us as the lucky people who get to live in B.C., don’t know what food shortage is, but if we lose the industry that feeds us, it will be too late to act then.

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

Any questions?

N. Simons: Thank you very much. Your comments resonated, obviously. We’ve heard diametrically opposed positions on these kinds of things, so sometimes when government doesn’t do them the right way, it’s not because they’re ignoring everybody, but they’re listening to a different group of people.

I’ll just point out that the original changes in meat regulations applied everywhere, and an exemption was granted to two regional districts only. Those are regional districts that were separated from any abattoir by water, for the most part, usually ferries. So the exemption was put into place.

I’ll tell you that the deputy minister at the time was convincing people that they should be afraid of all sorts of food-borne illnesses. But he’s no longer with the government. He’s with Maple Leaf Foods now. I just point that out.

I appreciate your perspective, and I thank you for taking the time to come and speak to us.

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

[1:30 p.m.]

D. Barnett: Thank you very much for your presentation. The question about the ALR panels. When did your people leave the commission? Just recently?

R. Reay: I believe that within the last year, both of those have gone. Yes.

D. Barnett: So do you have any local representation on the land commission at this time?

R. Reay: We have one member. But that was part of the reason why our second member resigned. There were some issues.

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

Oh. You have a question. Sorry. Missed that.

I. Paton: More of a comment. I don’t want to get too partisan amongst our group.

R. Leonard (Chair): Yeah. Let’s not get too partisan here.

I. Paton: No, no. But I appreciate all your comments. I actually had lunch with Frank Leonard about two weeks ago. He feels the panels are good, because they know your area, and they will go do the inspections before the information goes all the way to Burnaby.

R. Reay: Absolutely.

I. Paton: That’s all. Thanks.

R. Reay: Thank you. I appreciate you coming.

R. Leonard (Chair): We appreciate being here and having all of you attend.

We now have a few minutes to allow anybody out in the audience, who has not been registered, to come forward. We’ll give you five minutes to say a few words to us and to have some questions, if you like. Please come forward.

DOUG TEMPLE

D. Temple: My name is Doug Temple. Thank you for giving me a few minutes. I appreciate it.

I currently run an abattoir just outside of Fernie, in Hosmer, B.C. I started it up at the end of 2015. The reason why I started it up is because they took my E licence away. Now, they didn’t really take it away; they just didn’t reinstate them. They did that a lot in the Kootenays, in that area around there.

There was a need for an abattoir, so I went to work, and I put one in. I did it all on my own — no government grants, nothing. I just put it up. It’s small. It’s basic. It works. It’ll handle maybe 15 pigs and two or three beef in a day, but it does the job in our area.

One thing that I’d just like to reiterate to you. The reason why the E and the D licence stuff is coming to light is that we all got sent a form to fill out about E and D licences. Anyone that had lost their E and D — they’d given us each a survey to fill out. So that’s why it’s kind of stirred up around the Kootenays. It’s because everybody just jumped on: “Oh good. We’re going to get our E licence back.” That’s kind of where it is all coming from in our areas.

But I’m kind of disappointed. I was willing to go with the E licence, but now that I’ve had a B licence…. There’s absolutely a big difference. I would never kill like I did as a farm kill, now that I have a B, just because of the health and the public safety. The cleanliness is a big thing. Our inspector just about shut me down two or three times. It was like: “You just can’t do it this way anymore.” So it’s a big learning curve. As far as I’m concerned, the cleanliness is just huge.

When you have your own cooler and everything, and they never go outside the building…. They go right from there into a cooler. They’re cooled down. I don’t know if you know, but beef or pork or any of them are really porous when they’re freshly killed. But as soon as they go in the cooler — they’re in there for six hours — they get a hard skin on them. Then they can take a little bit. But before that, they’re just like a sponge. They just soak up everything. If you have any kind of foul odour, it’ll just soak it right into the meat. Instantly.

[1:35 p.m.]

Yeah. I don’t have a whole lot to say. I wasn’t even going to speak, because I’m not very good at speaking.

R. Leonard (Chair): I’m going to say you’re very good. I’m very thankful that you’ve come forward.

D. Temple: I’ve probably been called “Redneck” more than I’ve been called “Doug,” so I just didn’t want to get out of line. But that’s pretty well all I had to really say.

R. Leonard (Chair): Okay. Well, I appreciate it. We’ve got a question right away.

J. Tegart (Deputy Chair): I just wanted to say, Doug, that your story is one we’ve heard a number of times, in regards to being an E licence and moving into a B or an A and realizing, as you learned, that perhaps the E wasn’t where you should have been. It’s interesting to hear that perspective.

D. Barnett: Thank you very much. You’ve been very patient sitting there all day and listening. Can I ask you a personal question? What did it cost you to build a B?

D. Temple: For my B, I did 90 percent on my own. I had to get stuff like the cooler and everything all done. I put it in, and it cost me between $50,000 and $60,000.

D. Barnett: Between $50,000 and $60,000. In your business plan, how long do you figure it will take you to recover that capital?

D. Temple: It will probably be close to seven, eight years. There isn’t a lot of money in it.

D. Barnett: No, I know. There’s none, really.

D. Temple: I don’t do an A, but I work really closely with all our people in town that have meat shops. I deliver to the meat shops so that I know that meat has been looked after and taken straight to a meat shop, not left in the back of a truck when a guy went in for a beer or two in the hot sun and all the rest of that stuff. Make sure it’s down to four degrees, or I won’t let it out of the cooler. It all works.

R. Leonard (Chair): Thank you for that real-life experience to share with us.

Is there anyone else out there that would like to come up, seeing that we don’t bite?

Come on up. Joni Janzen, welcome.

JONI JANZEN

J. Janzen: Thank you. It’s been interesting to hear everybody’s side, and everybody has a side.

We used to do 300 chickens a year, and we took them to a facility for butchering in the Gold Creek area. It had an excellent facility where we could take our chickens and have them processed. We did that for a number of years, and it was very successful. The product that we produced was second to none, and our customers have said to us: “Why don’t you raise those chickens again?” But we got out of it because when the regulations came in for inspection and that, there was no facility in Cranbrook at the time.

When we had talked to the agricultural body, we said: “How can we comply with this, because there is no abattoir here anymore?” The fellow that we took our chickens to, it shut him down. He said: “I’m a small business, and I can’t afford to put in the system to accommodate doing this.” So he decided to shut down. I don’t know how many people it shut down. It shut down a ton of us.

Also, going to the abattoir, the other expense, when one would be available or whatever, added costs to us for our customers. It was getting to be too much. Originally, we would have had to go to Pincher Creek. Our chickens would have been dead before we got to Pincher Creek in 30-degree weather. So we just shut down our operation.

It’s just sad, because we had a second-to-none product. I know the gentleman here, Curtis, in Creston there…. I’m sure he does see some birds that are coming in that aren’t quality. But somehow, I guess, they’re being inspected, and those farmers’ sites should be visited by the inspection.

[1:40 p.m.]

If there is something out there and there’s a problem, they should be being inspected. He should never again see that come from that farm if the agriculture department is doing their job.

There are a lot of us that were out there producing really significant quality produce. Basically, we never went back to it because the cost per bird and everything, the cost of feed, the cost of…. We were just a small little part of the big picture and taking…. I know that when the gentleman where we used to go shut down, there was a lot of food out of the food chain that was quality.

I thought it’s valuable for you to know there’s a lot out there that were producing really great stuff, but just another cost. That’s probably the bottom line for farmers. It’s costs. You just can’t make it if you keep getting additional costs.

N. Simons: We’ve been told a few times that the result of some of the new regime of inspection caused some farmers to sort of go underground or do things below the radar, as it were. That’s a bit concerning, I guess, in some respects, depending on the circumstances. Have you noticed that? Would you be able to make any sort of a comment about that? I know a lot of people did go out of business. Did others go underground?

J. Janzen: I don’t know that, because I don’t personally know who was going to that facility. I just know that for our part, we completely quit. We did about 300 birds a year and up to 100 turkeys. We just quit the production because there was nowhere to take it safely. For us, personally, we did not want to have any risk of giving anyone something that they possibly would get sick from. We couldn’t do it safely, because typically, we butchered in the summertime, and it could be 30 degrees. We didn’t want that risk or whatever.

I think most people are responsible. Most farmers are responsible. They’re good, hard-working people. As well, with the irrigation, the electricity, all those things, things are being taken away from the farmer.

I do not want to be eating all this modified food and this chemical-based stuff. We have another business. I know that, for one thing…. I looked at a product — not a farm product but a salad dressing bottle — and there is glycol in there. That’s antifreeze. I know that because we use it in our business. That’s in our food. So I googled that. Well, it’s allowed to a certain percentage. If we’re getting that in this, this, this and that, how much are we really getting?

Just give the farmers a break, because they need it. I don’t know where we’re going to get our food from someday, because the next generations can’t go into farming. They can’t live. Something has to be done and seriously thought about or I don’t know what we’re going to be eating. Not quality stuff.

R. Leonard (Chair): Thank you very much for coming forward.

Are there any other folks who’d like to come forward? Okay. Thank you very much. I appreciate all of you coming out and spending the whole few hours with us. Our report will be produced by October 1 and presented to the Legislative Assembly by then.

Thank you very much for your attendance. The meeting is now adjourned.

The committee adjourned at 1:44 p.m.