by SUSAN MANN
The Thunder Bay poultry market is missing a piece of the puzzle but community leaders are hoping to change that by establishing an abattoir for bird processing.
Raili Roy, community outreach coordinator with Lakehead University’s Food Security Research Network, is studying the need for a provincially inspected poultry abattoir in Thunder Bay. The consumer demand portion of the study is completed and the next step is to develop a business plan.
A group of community members are drafting the business plan. One big problem is money. There has to be enough demand to support the abattoir. For there to be enough demand, the price has to be set low enough and for the abattoir to run it must charge farmers enough on each chicken to make it worth its while.
The price being considered for farmers is about $4 to process to each chicken, she says. The abattoir would also process turkeys and other poultry but fees for them would be higher.
The abattoir would be a cooperative with a board of directors from members of the community. They’d have to commit to bringing a certain number of chickens or turkeys every year to ensure the business stays viable. They’d also provide start-up costs.
The abattoir would likely be set up in a facility owned by Ken Milenko, who has been working on developing it for the past eight years. Roy says Milenko asked the community for help in setting it up. The community group would complete the necessary renovations and get the certification.
The facility would be opened this fall or next spring. It would be opened for three or four days a year.
Currently, there’s just one poultry abattoir between Thunder Bay and Sudbury located in Dryden. Farmers could take poultry there to be slaughtered but it’s an eight-hour drive round trip making that impractical.
Peggy Brekveld, Ontario Federation of Agriculture northern director, says a lack of poultry processing facilities in the Thunder Bay region means farmers who want to serve the local market can’t do it legally because it’s illegal to have birds processed in another province and brought back for sale to consumers.
Meat from animals processed in federally registered abattoirs can be sold in other provinces and countries while those processed in provincially registered abattoirs can only be sold within the province. The government prosecutes violators. In December 2011 a man pled guilty and was fined $1,500 in a Manitoba court for selling turkey and chicken from a Manitoba Hutterite Colony to two Kenora, Ontario residents.
There’s a demand for local poultry and farmers are willing to fill the market. “There’s actually a thriving market in Thunder Bay and poultry is one area where that market can grow,” Brekveld says.
Roy says five per cent of Thunder Bay’s population regularly shops locally and is interested in buying poultry regularly from local suppliers. Currently shoppers get their poultry from grocery stores. It “comes mostly from southern Ontario” and some from federally inspected plants in Manitoba.
As for farmers to fill the market, Roy says there’s a pretty bustling black market in poultry in the Thunder Bay area. “People are selling uninspected birds to people that they know, hush-hush.”
On the black market farmers are charging $3.50 to $3.99 a pound for their chickens, she says.
In many ways Thunder Bay is more connected to Manitoba and some parts of the United States than southern Ontario simply because it’s closer to those areas. Farmers routinely go to Steinbach, Manitoba, Wisconsin or Minnesota for machinery, parts and other supplies rather than making the 18-hour trek to southern Ontario.
Brekveld says there should be just one national abattoir system rather than the federal and provincial systems in place now. That would enable farmers to work between provinces.
Jason Reid, Ontario Cattlemen’s Association advisory councilor, agrees. He says having one abattoir system would better serve farmers wanting to fill local markets. Currently large grocery store chains have policies to only buy meat from federally registered plants. But food safety and meat quality regulations are the same in federal and provincial plants.
Reid says he doesn’t know where the closest federal plant is to Thunder Bay. At one time Thunder Bay Meat Processing Limited, which handles red meats, explored the possibility of switching to a federal registration but “there’s just so many stonewalls you run up against to be able to do that.”
There’s serious demand for Thunder Bay’s red meat abattoir. Roy says she bought pigs in May last year and booked the abattoir dates as soon as she got them. The earliest dates they could give her were in mid-November.
For farmers the situation means they could lose customers because they’re not willing to wait for the meat. It could also mean increased feeding costs. “Pigs consume a lot of grain during their last couple weeks of their lives,” she says. BF
Comments
There is another person working on a similar facility in the area near Kakabeka Falls.
We are in South Africa, and I can tell that the market is widely open, that's why we as a group wants to approach that market and I know that will be successful because of our researches and experiences in that field of processing, the only thing is money or lets call it finance, but before that step, we need a good business plan to take over a existing operation plan.
I grew up in the Niagara region and it seemed like every corner had a butcher shop / Abattoir on it. In Thunder Bay there is only one abitor for the whole NorthWest District and this is a huge district.
So the owner has a monopoly on what he wants to charge. The wait times for slaughter are unacceptable. I know people who have began slaughtering at home due to wait times
My concern about the lack of knowledge in the general public has been justified here.
Jason Reid mentions his concern that "food safety and meat quality regulations aref the same in federal and provincial plants. " is far off the mark!
Within Ontario regulations, there is no particular concern for meat quality in the poultry business. Whereas, there is greater concern for meat quality in the federal level. Overall meat quality is of no concern whatsoever of OMAFRA. They do not grade meat! (Poultry)
Although Brekvelds idea of one national abattoir system is noble, it would require every small meat plant owner and operater to step up to federal standards.
You had better check out those regulations before you speak this language! Does anybody know what HACCP costs? And that would only be the beginning.
Small, custom meat plants face a considerable uphill battle to stay in business, let alone get into business.
Again, Brekvelds idea of a one stop meat inspection program would ultimately cost an exorbitant amount of money. This plan would ultimately push the price of processing both red meat animals and poultry very much higher than it is right now. Farmers have already been faced wIth higher costs of production due to fuels, labour and fertilizer, let alone feed costs. Would they be expected to shoulder the burden of higher processing cost? I think not.
Moving to federal regulations has its positive side if the processor is planning to export their product.
Moving to federal regulations has absolutely no upside to a provincial plant that is only processing custom poultry for a few farmers in the area.
On a side note, OMAFRA is not the only concern for both processors or farmers alike.
The Ontario Farm Products Marketing Commission is of much bigger concern to marketing local food within our very close agricultural community. (Did you know that you can not grow over a single acre of asparagus without quota rights?)
Ken
Please forward a complete business plan to start an poultry abbatoir
In Jan 2014, I proposed an Ontario-wide solution for poulty abattoirs, so all areas of Ontario can be well served at minimal cost to farmers, consumers, and the province.
This solution is based on what the Connecticut poultry farmers have already done. Ontario would need 128 mobile site locations scattered throughout Ontario and 7 mobile abattoirs trailers for serving all of Ontario.
Assuming that the mobile abattoir crew would do all birds at a site in one day, a second day to clean up, and a third day on the road to travel to the next site & set up there, that is a 3 day cycle per site.
If farmers are doing the typical quota-based 6.5 poultry grow cycles per year, they will need the mobile abattoir to come by their area for each of those poultry grow cycles. Therefore there are 6.5 cycles per year x 128 sites x 3 days/site= 2,496 days of work to be done in all of Ontario. Assuming 350 work days per year for each mobile abattoir, we would therefore need 7 mobile abattoirs trailers for serving all of Ontario.
Rather than serving just themselves, hopefully Thunder Bay's needs will encourage them to lobby for a better solution that serves all Ontario AND Thunder Bay better and cheaper.
If we do this piece meal, the grand solution for everybody becomes less and less feasible. Ontario can't afford to put a stand-alone bricks and mortar abattoir in every community. That means if Thunder Bay gets a solution just for them, and others follow suit, vast regions of Ontario will be left behind with no solution.
Is Thunder Bay's current proposal in the best interest of all Ontario?
Glenn Black
Small Flock Poultry Farmers of Canada
a regional solution or an Ontario-wide solution? why need to choose one or another? We all know that the location of Thunder Bay is very trickey, therefore a mobile abattoir plan, with Thunder Bay included, will be very fuel consuming, and the fuel money will be added up to the meat price. If so, how about consider an On Ontario plan without Thunder Bay to lower the price for Sothern Ontario, and let Thunder Bay develope their own?
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