Agriculture Committee on March 26th, 2015

[Laurie Nicol]

We have provincially licensed plants that are shipping directly into Sobeys Ontario warehouse with distribution across Ontario, and they are back into the Loblaws chain where historically they had a procurement policy that they would not buy—

[Mark Eyking, Liberal, Sydney—Victoria, NS]

Can your product go through Ontario and go to Manitoba? It has to stay in Ontario, does it?

[Laurie Nicol]

Yes.

[The Chair, Conservative, Bev Shipley]

Thank you very much, Mr. Eyking.

We'll now go to Mr. Maguire, please, for five minutes.

[Larry Maguire, Conservative, Brandon—Souris, MB]

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Thanks to our guests for being here today via teleconference, as well.

The rules must be acceptable: that is something we heard from the Canadian meat industry, which was just here as well, and you're saying that certainly you want to keep safety in the forefront of all the operations, and I certainly believe that myself.

Cory, in regard to the $500,000 you indicated it might take to move from provincial inspection to federal inspection, what's that based on? How much of that would end up going to equipment to make upgrades in equipment, if any, and labour, or is it mostly just for inspection?

[Cory Van Groningen]

No, that would be changes to structure and equipment.

[Larry Maguire, Conservative, Brandon—Souris, MB]

Thanks. You certainly have to have a lot more floor space, I understand. What other criteria would be involved?

[Cory Van Groningen]

There are things like rail height. The rail we land the animal on would have to be six inches higher than we currently have it. That's a prescriptive example. It was built some years ago, and it's a mild steel rail, so that would have to be changed to stainless steel.

We don't slaughter two species at the same time. We slaughter on different days because of the nature of it. Essentially we would have to double our floor space to meet federal requirements, so we would have to have two kill floors. That's very difficult because we're only using them for one or two days, and so it doesn't really make sense that way.

[Larry Maguire, Conservative, Brandon—Souris, MB]

I was talking to my colleague Mr. Payne here, and Mr. Eyking just raised this situation as well. I come from western Manitoba, and he's indicated it's the same thing on the eastern side of Alberta where he is. We have small abattoirs there as well, very successful operations. But we have cattle coming off a farm in Saskatchewan into Manitoba to be slaughtered, and they can't even take them back home again, back into Saskatchewan, for their own cattle.

Can you indicate to me if that's still the case? It certainly was not that long ago in Manitoba. I believe it's still the case, but do you have a similar situation here in Ontario as well?

[Cory Van Groningen]

I'm not sure, but if it were for personal consumption, I'm assuming they could take it home, because we can buy meat from across borders. We don't have that level of inspection.

If it was for commerce, for a farmer's market or something like that, I think that would be a problem. They wouldn't be able to do that, because it would be for sale in a different province.

[Larry Maguire, Conservative, Brandon—Souris, MB]

Yes, I believe it was; I think they could use it for their own use. The fact is that if the small abattoir had been on their doorstep, or five miles closer to them, as an example, across the border, they would have been able to...have sold it in Saskatchewan. I guess that's something to look at in regard to the condition, because the standards in those two abattoirs, if there was one nearby in Saskatchewan—there wasn't, that's why they used this, as a matter of distance—it would have been beneficial for them to do so.

You were talking about your farm-direct members as well. Can you give us an idea of how many of your abattoirs would be looking at farm-direct marketing as well?

You may not do it yourself as the owner of the plant, but the cattle that come into them don't all go to Sobeys or the other markets you've pointed out, so can you give me a breakdown of what the percentage might be?

[Cory Van Groningen]

Are you talking about our own retail business, direct-to-consumer sales?

[Larry Maguire, Conservative, Brandon—Souris, MB]

I don't mean your own plant particularly, but across the province of Ontario in this case.

[Cory Van Groningen]

Do you mean for retail sales?

[Larry Maguire, Conservative, Brandon—Souris, MB]

Yes. I mean the amount that goes into those plants, which you just said stays in Ontario and gets sold through retail stores, versus the amount that would go back and be sold farm-direct or by another means.

[Laurie Nicol]

The Ontario industry is a bit unique in that, because we have these other, as I refer to them, free-standing meat plants, it's quite integrated. So Cory's operation as an abattoir can sell his fresh beef and fresh pork to this further processor, which turns it into hams or bacons or whatever, and then it is sold either at a store on site or by other retail stores.

Out of the 132 abattoirs in Ontario, I believe all but seven are involved in some value-added processes.

There are fewer and fewer abattoirs just doing a custom-kill operation, because the cost has become so high with the SRM requirements, the labour costs, the electricity, and everything else within Ontario that they have really had to diversify their operation to include value-added processing.

[The Chair, Conservative, Bev Shipley]

Thank you very much, Mr. Maguire.

Go ahead, Cory.

[Cory Van Groningen]

Custom slaughter has been huge and has built a lot of plants. When my grandfather bought our current plant, all it did was custom slaughter.

Things like livestock prices certainly have an impact. Now when we have very high livestock prices, especially for beef, custom slaughter isn't something that's in very high demand, because they get a very good dollar selling at auction, for instance.

Abattoirs have to have a diversified income stream. Otherwise they can't really survive the market price changes.

[The Chair, Conservative, Bev Shipley]

Thank you very much, Mr. Maguire.

Ms. Brosseau, go ahead, please, for five minutes.

[Ruth Ellen Brosseau, NDP, Berthier—Maskinongé, QC]

I'd like to thank the witnesses for their participation in this very important study.

If these are provincially inspected, what happens when there is a recall? How does that work? Does CFIA kind of take the lead on the notification? Is there a process these abattoirs have to follow? Does that happen all across the province of Ontario if they see an issue?

I'm just wondering how that works. Is it the same across the province? How do other provinces deal with provincially inspected abattoirs? And then when it comes to a recall, when they have an issue, it's the CFIA?

[Laurie Nicol]

That's some of the challenge. The answer is, yes, CFIA is the organization that is responsible for recall, but in Ontario, as part of our Ontario Meat Regulation 31/05, there is a mandatory requirement for all of those 500 licenced abattoirs and free-standing meat plants to have a recall program in place. They actually test the...and are required to do mock recalls on an annual basis.

When something, whether it be through a CFIA investigation or through the province's microbial sampling program, has been identified, most of the companies would hold the product that is being tested so it doesn't enter the marketplace. But should that product enter the marketplace and is found to be at risk to the consumer, the province...and CFIA takes control, but it's certainly a partnership between the two, and in some cases our local public health as well, depending on where the distribution was.

[Ruth Ellen Brosseau, NDP, Berthier—Maskinongé, QC]

Thank you.

Before being elected I worked in the restaurant industry. I was responsible for training staff and food safety. Every once in a while we would have inspectors who would come in and test everything, test temperatures, and make sure the freezers were stocked right. Of course you're hopeful that everything turns out right and that you did adequate training.

I was going through your website and I noticed that you do some training too. I was wondering if you could talk to us about some of the training that you do in food handling.

[Laurie Nicol]

In Ontario Regulation 31/05, and I can't speak to the other provinces, there is a mandatory requirement that in every business there be a supervisor on site who has taken food handler training. Our organization has invested in further education and promoting the highest level of food safety, understanding, in that whole food safety culture, that it's not when an inspector comes in that you start adopting those principles. You build that into your staff so that you're audit-ready all the time.

I guess that's the other part where a smaller operation would say there is onerous paperwork, but that paper burden is your burden of proof to show that you have monitored the temperatures and you knew where that product went to simplify recall should it happen.

We, as an organization, when that new regulation came in place, invested a lot of resources in developing a standard operating procedure manual that provided templates for record-keeping and assistance in writing their programs. Then it becomes the requirement of the plant to do it on an ongoing basis and the requirement of the inspector in the plant to ensure that they are up to date, not done pre-audit but on an ongoing basis. We do have the annual audit program as well to confirm that it has been done.

[Ruth Ellen Brosseau, NDP, Berthier—Maskinongé, QC]

Thank you.

My next question is about buy local, buy Canadian, or in your case buy Ontario. Could you speak to certain programs that maybe you are using, or on what is working in Ontario to help you and your producers bring to market and sell their wonderful meats?

[Laurie Nicol]

There are a number of programs. Our province holds the Foodland Ontario program that has been around forever and primarily started in the fruit and vegetable marketplace and still has the highest recognition for that. Processors who meet the definition for Ontario made are entitled to do that.

As an organization we also have the Homegrown Ontario program, which was started back in early 2004, I believe, with funding from the federal government. In terms of commodity, Ontario has Ontario lamb. Ontario pork has their own branding program. As a company and as a retailer in Ontario, you end up with a case that is all stickered, whereas the Homegrown Ontario branding program was a red barn that indicated it had the Ontario definition for beef, pork, and lamb; they would be different, but that could identify that was Ontario.

There are also a number of branding programs regionally. If you're familiar with Ontario, Prince Edward County is very good for that “Savour Muskoka”. There are a lot of different programs.

Also it leads to, what is the definition of Ontario? There are companies that would prefer to use a Canada brand depending on the markets they're serving. We have federal pork producers that would want to use the Canada pork logo instead of Ontario, again for the markets they're serving.