Sunrise Meat permitted to reopen

BARWICK—Sunrise Meat and Sausage in Barwick was given permission by the Northwestern Health Unit to reopen Monday after being closed for almost two weeks.
The action came after a weekend protest which eventually allowed district farmers to move meat condemned last week by the Ontario Ministry of Agriculture, Food, and Rural Affairs off the premises.
“We’re getting started again slowly,” noted Paul Peters, who owns the Barwick processing plant. “We have to get some meat ready for processing. . . .
“We can still do all the inspected meat and the wild game for now.”
“I think they are somewhat relieved,” district cattle farmer Kim Jo Bliss said about the Peters. “But he’s still only operating at 10-15 percent of what he should be.”
OMAFRA spokesperson Brent Ross told the Times last week that officials had found both inspected and uninspected meat on the premises, adding it is illegal to transport uninspected meat in Ontario.
As such, all the meat in the facility was condemned. But after a second hearing on the matter, OMAFRA released the wild game and federally-inspected meat.
“It was determined a certain amount of meat had, in fact, been federally-inspected,” Ross noted. “It was wrapped and had been kept separate from the uninspected meat, so that was released from detention.
“As was the wild game because it was clear that it had not been stored where the uninspected meat was,” he added. “There was no chance of cross-contamination.”
But local livestock producers and other residents were not ready to let the other meat—18 beef carcasses and five pork carcasses—be picked up for rendering and staged a protest at the facility both Friday and Saturday.
“We have to show our disgust at the situation,” stressed producer Joe Sletmoen. “The meat belongs to the people and there is nothing wrong with it.”
Hundreds of district residents spent the day at Saturday’s protest despite the cold weather. They had a bonfire, cooked hotdogs, and even held an impromptu Remembrance Day service with a prayer and moment of silence.
Bliss was irked that a rendering truck from Winnipeg already had made its way to Emo before the second hearing had even wrapped up.
“That totally set the wrong mood,” she stressed, adding after some negotiations with OMAFRA, Peters’ representatives agreed to move the condemned meat from the processing plant to a “reefer” truck so the facility could reopen.
And when First Nations got on board to fight for the meat for producers, the truck was moved to Manitou Rapids reserve.
“I was a little concerned on Saturday when people decided to have the trailer moved off the premises,” remarked producer and negotiator Amos Brielmann.
“It was not what I promised to [OMAFRA],” he noted. “Some people thought they would put a court injunction in place not to move it. I couldn’t sleep because it was a break of a promise.”
People also became concerned about the unprocessed meat in the reefer truck and made the decision to process it on Monday.
“There were over 40 people cutting—there are a whole bunch of professional meat-cutters,” Brielmann noted. “We moved boxes from one trailer to the other, so it’s all in one reefer truck with two compartments—the freezer and the cooler.
“The bones and trims are all there. We built boxes and they can weight it if they want to,” he added. “Nobody even took a pound of meat away.”
He explained the meat will stay in Manitou until OMAFRA is ready to enter into more negotiations or at least offer a proposal.
But none of the producers have heard from OMAFRA since the weekend protest.
“We’ve left messages at the ministry and [Monday] was a holiday, so they haven’t returned our calls,” Brielmann indicated. “If they don’t return our calls today [Tuesday], I think they are either thinking of letting us rot or don’t know what to do.”
Ross said the situation is under investigation and couldn’t comment further on what happened.
“They’re investigating the general situation, not necessarily Sunrise itself,” he said yesterday.
The producers are hoping an interim solution can be reached to allow the processing of uninspected meat until a local abattoir can be built.
“Hopefully in the long run, something will change, but I don’t know if it will,” Peters remarked.
As for Brielmann, he feels it’s necessary to hear an apology from OMAFRA’s Jim Cushing, manager of enforcement and compliance.
“When he went into the building the first time, he said there was no inspected meat there—that it was proof Paul Peters is selling uninspected meat,” he said.
“. . . that made the whole thing nasty. . . . I think he has to retract that and make a public statement.”
Brielmann also expressed concerns about rumours of who issued the original complaint about the uninspected meat.
“This is slander because people don’t have proof,” he argued. “I don’t think it’s right to do that. Wait until you have the proof and then you can move on. It is not right for the community to do.
“On the one side, we all rallied together, fighting for one cause, and we should continue to stick together,” he stressed.
When regulations regarding the transporting of uninspected meat was changed in September, 2004, Peters said he was granted a verbal exemption because of the lack of a local abattoir, which is why his operation continued for more than two years.
A newly-formed committee—“Local Food for Local People” (consisting of Bliss, Brielmann, Sletmoen, Debbie Zimmerman, Clayton Teeple, and Nico Veldhuisen)—addressed the public at a meeting last Wednesday night in Barwick.
They established three objectives they will work towards:
•to clear the name of Sunrise Meat and Sausage owners Paul and Susan Peters, as well as their staff;
•to ask OMAFRA to postpone the rending of the condemned meat until the findings of the hearing are available in writing; and
•to ask OMAFRA to grant an interim solution until a licensed slaughter facility can be constructed in Rainy River District.
“At this point we just have to wait,” Bliss said. “We don’t want to go do anything yet because everything is safe and fine for now.”
She stressed she was proud at how district residents worked together and how professional everyone handled themselves.
“We still have to fight this,” she warned. “It’s not over yet—there’s still hope some good will come of all this.”
(Fort Frances Times)