We might get there.
The decision we're wrestling with currently, even though we enjoy our work and had hoped to pass it on to our son, is either to change the nature of our business or simply close it altogether. If this happens, there would be one less butcher shop on the map. To close our butcher shop would mean four full-time and six part-time employees would be unemployed. Ten families would be affected, and although this number may be considered small, please remember that I speak not only for our own family business but many others in the province.
In conversation with other small meat shop owners who are in the same predicament as we are, their thoughts are the same. If there's no return to their investment, there's no money to invest in costly regulations.
To summarize, I have presented you with two main issues that restrict us as small butcher shops and, consequently, our competitiveness with large meat plants in the grocery chains: first, the unnecessary paper burden that eats away at our time and therefore our profitability, and secondly, the structural criteria that require a large capital expense that we will never recoup.
Yes, we need to have appropriate risk management regulations. Canadians have every right to trust in the safety of the food they eat. However, the regulations need to be outcome-based and not process-driven, and not something that can be easily manipulated to fool the inspection system.
Please take into consideration the financial plight of the hundreds of small and culturally diverse meat shops in this province and help us to pass them down to the next generation.