Chop school Premier's choice cut at provincial awards

Wednesday, November 18, 2015

by SUSAN MANN

The ingenious products and processes developed by the top five winners of this year’s Agri-Food Innovation Excellence Awards are a clear indication innovation abounds in Ontario’s agricultural sector.

VG Meats of Simcoe was named winner of the top prize, the Premier’s Award, for coming up with a customized meat processing and retail training program. The company won $75,000.

The awards were presented by Premier Kathleen Wynne Wednesday in Toronto at the Premier’s Summit on Agri-Food.

“We’re pretty innovative in what we do because we have to be,” says Kevin Van Groningen, one of the owners of VG Meats. The other owners are Kevin’s wife, Morgan, and brothers Cory and his wife Heidi, Chad, Kyle and the Van Groningen parents, Wayne and Joan. “It’s tough for us to compete and grow our company unless we are innovative in the way we do things,” Kevin says.

VG Meats couldn’t find the skilled workers it needed for the family’s processing and retail operations, so the company teamed up with Longo’s to create its own training program, called the Chop School. From a pool of 300 applicants, VG Meats selected nine people to go through the 100 hours of paid training that included classroom sessions, hands-on practice cutting the meat along with time spent on the Van Groningen beef farm. The first program was so successful VG Meats is launching a second class.

The company also developed a Farmer in Training program to help retail employees understand how VG Meats produces its meats.

Kevin Van Groningen says people in the Chop School spend time on the farm “so they develop a respect for the value of the item they’re handling. We wanted them to see first-hand” what goes into raising the cattle.

Clear Valley Hops of Collingwood took home $50,000 as part of the Minister’s Award. Owners Laurie Thatcher-Craig and John Craig developed a process to reduce the time from hops harvest to when the product is frozen to just 24 hours.

Thatcher-Craig says they have worked hard for the past four years to bring hops production back to Ontario. Most hops used in beer making in the province are imported from the United States and Germany. This year so far, $17.1 million worth of hops was imported into Canada and $7.3 million was imported into Ontario.

She says they also worked hard on their application for the awards and were hopeful they’d be among the winners. “When that phone call came in (10 days ago), we were like, ‘Oh my gosh.’”

The award validates “the work that we’ve been doing,” Thatcher-Craig says, noting the craft brewing market in Canada is tough to crack because brewers have mainly been dealing with American suppliers.

After harvesting the hops, the Craigs put the crop in a 40-foot high oast house (a building specially designed to dry hops) to dry it using low heat. That process preserves the hops’ essential oils that are loaded with flavour.

After drying, the hops are pelleted and then packed in bags which block oxygen and ultraviolent rays. The packed hops pellets are flushed with nitrogen and then flash frozen. The entire process from harvest to freezing takes only 24 hours.

Thatcher-Craig says the process was developed by the Fermentation Institute at Oregon State University. The researchers recognized the way hops have been handled in the past 100 years doesn’t protect the essential oils, which bring the flavour into the beer.

The process the Craigs use to guard the essential oils in their hops “creates a richer flavour in the beer and a lingering effect on the palate, very much like a high-end wine,” she says.

The Craigs grow 13 acres of hops and produced 11,000 pounds of dry weight hops this year. They sell the product to craft brewers in Ontario and to one in Nova Scotia.

There were also three Leaders in Innovation Awards handed out Wednesday, the agriculture ministry’s Nov. 18 news release says. They are:

• Celmar Dairy Inc. of Norwich for building a custom system to improve the transfer and storage of forage. The system cuts the time it takes to fill silos by 50 per cent.
• Durham Foods of Port Perry for creating a user-friendly app making it easier for companies to track and document their compliance with national food safety guidelines.
• Vineland Estates Winery Inc. of Vineland for investing in Canada’s first optical grape sorter machine. It sorts the grapes six times faster than doing it by hand and delivers better quality grapes.

There were also 50 regional Agri-Food Innovation Excellence Awards from across Ontario handed out at ceremonies across the province in recent weeks. BF