Bad idea say area beef farmers who urge Ontario to cut red tape for local abattoirs instead
Nelson Zandbergen
Farmers Forum
OTTAWA — American cattle producers will be allowed to slaughter, process and sell beef directly to consumers from their farms, in a move touted by U.S. President Donald Trump as a way of bypassing the “big four” meat packers. Whether farm-processed beef will be subject to standard inspection was a point of confusion and debate in the U.S. media, pending the release of more details.
But the whiff of unregulated slaughter and sale didn’t sit well with Ontario producers who spoke with Farmers Forum. While they shared their American counterparts’ unhappiness with a heavily consolidated meat processing industry, they wouldn’t want to see Trump’s Aug. 28 executive order replicated in Ontario over food safety concerns.
Ontario farmers are legally permitted to slaughter livestock they have raised on their own property strictly for the personal consumption of themselves and their immediate family.
The prospect of deregulated on-farm slaughter for public consumption was a step too far for Kent County producer Joe Dickenson. “I think it’s colossally stupid, to put it bluntly,” Dickenson said, pointing out that uninspected processing leaves the door open for diseased animals or antibiotic residues to enter the food supply. “Once we take away any sort of oversight over our food production, why do we have any at all?”
Dickenson acknowledged the economic temptation of allowing on-farm processing, noting that abattoir fees can swallow up to a quarter of an animal’s value rendered to the farmer. While he understood the urge to break up market monopolies, he argued that the proper response was enforcement of antitrust laws against the big processors.
“We need competition 100 %. I will agree with Trump on that,” he said, noting that Ontario effectively has only one large packer, Cargill. “But taking away any sort of oversight? All that’s going to do is lead people to eat artificial meat because it feels safer… Go vegan because it feels safer. I want people to eat beef,” he said.
Under current Ontario regulations, farmers can slaughter their own livestock strictly for personal consumption. Any beef sold to the public must be processed at a licensed, inspected abattoir, a rule established in 1991.
Norfolk County beef producer Kevin Krakar saw the issue as a “catch-22”. While he sympathized with producers in remote areas like Northern Ontario, who face six- to eight-hour drives to reach an abattoir, he feared that uninspected sales from the farm, if attempted in this province, would ultimately harm the sector.
“It’s good to have a system (of inspection) that you know … is an independent thing,” Krakar said.
But he also acknowledged that Ontario producers and processors face a steep cost disadvantage due to rigid slaughterhouse rules on specified risk material (SRM) that don’t apply in the U.S.
Port Perry crop farmer John Molloy, who raised beef for 50 years until 2018, recalled when local abattoirs dotted every county, serving nearby butcher shops and processing farm freezer orders smoothly. Over-regulation eventually drove many of those small family businesses out of operation, Molloy said.
Still, Molloy was skeptical of allowing an uninspected “free for all” parallel processing system on the province’s beef farms, suggesting it would be a recipe for disaster in an era of globalized livestock movements.
“It’d be fine until a mad cow got mixed in,” he said. “And then what?”
Rather than adopting unregulated on-farm slaughter in Ontario, Molloy suggested cutting red tape for local abattoirs so smaller regional processors can survive and expand.
Middlesex beef producer Bob Kroesbergen gave much the same prescription. “I would like to see the government make it easier for local abattoirs to be able to service local customers. Because the red tape is ridiculous,” Kroesbergen said.
For years, the Beef Farmers of Ontario has lobbied governments for greater processing capacity in the province.
