Condemned carcasses at Greensides hauled away

Three beef carcasses at Greensides General Store in Devlin, which were condemned by the Ontario Ministry of Agriculture, Food, and Rural Affairs earlier this month, were picked up and rendered last week.
Owner Murnie Allen noted OMAFRA officials were at his store at 6:10 a.m. last Wednesday and he loaded the meat into the truck for them.
“We were going to have to do something with it anyway because it would start to go bad,” Allen said, adding he and the farmers who owned the beef were in agreement to comply with the rendering.
But he indicated those farmers aren’t necessarily happy with the outcome when compared to a similar situation at Sunrise Meat and Sausage in Barwick. Farmers moved the condemned meat there into a “reefer” truck and then onto Rainy River First Nations.
The band leaders then “disposed” of the meat by allowing it to return to its owners.
“If anyone should have gotten their meat back, it should have been us,” Allen remarked, noting the meat at his store was kept in separate coolers from the inspected meat.
“There has been an injustice done,” he added. “The farmers who owned this meat are mad and I don’t blame them . . . I did everything to comply [with OMAFRA] and they still took my meat.”
While Allen isn’t planning to seek an interim solution to process uninspected meat until an abattoir is built in the district, he said he doesn’t think the situation is over.
“I’m just waiting to see how it all plays out,” he remarked.
Meanwhile, the “Local Food for Local People” committee, which was struck during the situation surrounding Sunrise Meat and Sausage, had scheduled a teleconference this afternoon (Nov. 29) with Pat Johnson, OMAFRA’s director of food safety.
“We’re hoping to just talk about an interim solution,” noted committee member Kim Jo Bliss, saying an abattoir won’t be built in this area for a while yet.
“I’m sure they’re not going to make a solution [Wednesday]—they’re just going to listen to our story,” she said.
The committee also is hosting a potluck dinner tomorrow (Nov. 30) at 6:30 p.m. at the Barwick Hall since the immediate crisis of the uninspected meat being rendered is over.
“We felt since everyone rallied together, it would be nice to get together again,” Bliss reasoned. “We don’t want to be rubbing it in anyone’s faces. It was neat we all pulled together, so let’s do it one more time and know we still have a problem to solve.
“That way we can recognize everyone working together.”
The committee has circulated a petition proposing an interim solution whereby uninspected meat could be processed at Sunrise Meat and Sausage.
It states inspected meat would be processed only on Monday and Tuesday of each week, and then uninspected meat and wild game would be processed there Wednesday through Saturday.
The facility would be inspected by a licensed health inspector before the processing began each week.