Dear editor:
In this fine country, countless animals are being gut shot, shot in the front quarters, hind quarters, and maybe many times on any parts of their bodies.
They are being dragged through swamps, rivers, mud—any terrain you can imagine. These carcasses are being hung in trees, and in uneven cooling temperatures.
They are hauled in back of half-ton pick-up trucks, on four-wheelers and trailers, up and down dusty roads to all kinds of butcher shops in this country. Health inspectors have to step over carcass upon carcass when they make their inspections of some of these facilities to see if these shops are abiding by rules to provide a safe meat product to consumers.
There seems to be no concern of how this wild game is handled.
I am not against hunting wild game. I have hunted since I was old enough to obtain my licence as a youth and have seen it all. But this is food for thought:
The farmers of Rainy River District have no sensible access to a government-inspected slaughter facility. There is a large effort being made to change this situation and get a facility built here, though the process is slow in coming and wrapped in a lot of red tape.
There are limited facilities in Dryden and Thunder Bay. But these places are not able to address Rainy River District’s slaughter needs.
You bounce your livestock up bumpy, curvy roads for too many hours to get to these facilities, which gets the animal all stressed out (the result is a tough, poor quality processed carcass). And then how do you legally get the carcasses back to your favourite butcher shop.
Do all, or any, farmers have refrigerated vehicles to haul these carcasses home from Dryden or Thunder Bay (which is what is legally required)? I think not!
A few years ago, rules were made from southern Ontario for all of us—that cattle and farm-produced animals must be slaughtered in a government-licensed slaughter facility with legal meat inspection.
Most everyone is agreeable with this rule, but there is a big unlevel playing field up here. There is no licensed slaughter facility up here in Rainy River District.
There are many in southern Ontario. Farmers actually have choices of facilities down there.
When this rule came out, many hard-working, community-minded farmers lobbied to have this new rule be graced here until such time that a slaughter facility could be built and running.
Area farmers then could still bring animals to the area butcher shops to be processed. This would be until we here in Rainy River District could be operating on a more level playing field with the rest of Ontario and Canada.
Doesn’t this sound sensible?
We thought that common sense prevailed here (instead of every farmer slaughtering and processing their animals at home under all kinds of processing styles and aging methods).
Most feel the local butcher shops are the best and safest method to deal with this situation. Common sense would tell anyone that this is the safest (if you think not, just go back and do research on the beginning part of my little letter).
We need a grace period on these new rules until we get a government-licensed facility up and running in our area.
“I don’t make the rules, I just enforce them” doesn’t cut it. Pass the buck somewhere else. We need people to be accountable where economies and livelihoods are at stake.
Governments who think they are really helping the farmers out are missing the boat here big time.
Now is the time to get off their hands and really pull out the stops to help. Not to pick on the food growers who are in a minority in this country. We don’t need to be kicked and kicked again when we are down.
“O Canada” probably produces the safest food in the world.
Signed,
Peter Spuzak
A cattleman of the Rainy River District
