While no one can argue against the need to protect Canada’s food supply, the Northwestern Health Unit’s abrupt closure of Sunrise Meat and Sausage in Barwick last week is a prime case of a regulation that flies in the face of common sense.
How is it that a moose carcass, likely dragged through the bush for several kilometres behind a four-wheeler and then hung for several days in someone’s shed or garage, can be cut and wrapped in a clean environment but not a head of cattle raised on a district farm?
It’s a question that’s got a lot of people scratching their heads—and district farmers downright angry. It’s clearly hitting some in the pocketbook right away. Kim Jo Bliss, a well-known local cattle farmer, estimates she’ll lose almost $4,000 worth of meat currently stored at Sunrise because it’s been arbitrarily condemned.
Meat she and her family had counted on to consume over the winter months.
But there’s a long-term impact, too. Farmers now will have to ship their livestock to licensed facilities in Dryden or Thunder Bay, which means an added cost—not to mention a poorer quality of meat due to the stress on the animals during that long trip.
Then there’s the owners of Sunrise, who have seen their business shut down right in the middle of their busiest season. And once they re-open, there will be less revenue—and potential job losses—because they’re no longer permitted to process local farmers’ meat.
Which, by the way, was something the government had tacitly allowed, given the lack of a licensed facility in this area, for two years.
District farmers are working together to finally build an abattoir here. In the meantime, the health unit should have left alone the safest, most cost-efficient option open to them.
Don’t our farmers deserve to be treated the same as hunters?
Fort Frances Times
Local News from Across the Rainy River District
