Sure. I'll also send a website to all of you that will be helpful, because there's a handy diagram.
British Columbia introduced the meat inspection regulation in 2004. At that time the only option was to upgrade or build a class A or B facility. It involved an actual abattoir-type building. Class A does slaughter and further processing. Class B does slaughter only. They both come from an abattoir facility, but the end product of B is a bird in a bag, or a carcass, where in A you get further cutting, wrapping, processing, and other such things, in one facility.
In the period from 2004 to 2010, it became evident that there were producers, especially in remote parts of British Columbia, such as Haida Gwaii, that had no options. They didn't have the volume of animals or the money, because it costs easily hundreds of thousands, if not a million dollars to put together a red meat facility. They didn't have the resources to build an abattoir and that problem wasn't going away.
In 2010, after doing a consultation in three remote sites, the province introduced two new categories of farm gate licence. For those, you don't have to build a facility. You do have to take a training program. The training program teaches you how to develop a food safety plan. The program is taught and the food safety plan is monitored by an environmental health officer from the health authorities. That's distinct from the A and B classes, which are monitored and operated by the B.C. Centre for Disease Control.
For an extra layer of complication, the inspectors used in the A and B facilities are CFIA personnel on contract to the province. The A and B facilities have one system, and the D and E farm gate licences have another. The distinction between the D and the E is that for the E you're limited to 10 animal units a year. An animal unit is 1,000 pounds of live weight. You can translate that into a lot of chickens, a few lambs, and one steer. That's an E licence. A D licence allows you to slaughter and sell other people's animals at the farm gate, as well as your own, up to 25 animal units. You may sell them to local retail and restaurants, but only within your regional district. The Ds and Es are largely restricted to regional districts that do not have an A or B. There are some exceptions, but I think that's enough detail. That change was made in 2010.