By Oli Herrera

SURVEY FINDINGS

Mobile slaughter trucks recommended for B.C. meat producers

Mar 15, 2022 | 5:11 PM

PRINCE GEORGE—Although a lot of animals live and grow here in B.C., in the stores, you more than likely going to find labels with Alberta or Ontario on it. That’s because most of the animals are processed in other provinces.

One of the reasons that happens is the lack of slaughter access and access to cut and wrap services.

“We’re not seeing that profit here in B.C. that money is not circulating here in B.C., if producers here could finish those animals, they would keep the vast majority of the profits in their own pockets.” said Julia Smith, Vice President, Small Scale Meat Producers Association.

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That lack of profit is one of the top three challenges that the SSMPA found in their recent survey. More than 700 operations were asked about their work and what challenges they faced. 94% reported that they had to find a second source of income not relevant to their meat work and only 1% of producers reported high profitability.

“65% of the no-longer producers quit after less than 10 years in business. A third of these were from the south coast and they reported ending their operations after less than five years.” said Corine Singfield, Director at SSMPA.

In our region–Omineca Skeena–there’s still interest for producers to move to a full time operation, with almost half reporting so. Yet, given how spread out many operations in our region and overall in the north, lack of slaughter access continues to make it difficult to meet demands.

“We actually had a lot of comments that there was a lot of demand for the product and actually that producers felt that they could not meet the demand for the products.” said Singfield.

Last year, the province made changes to its licensing. One of those changes allowed for producers to apply for onsight slaughter, but infrastructure costs could be high.

Which is why one of the recommendations from the SSMPA is to overhaul the current system of abattoirs and provide better access for rural producers. One suggestion is to implement a one year slaughter truck pilot program.

“A few slaughter trucks fitted to travel to farms and safely slaughter and transport carcases to a refrigerated space should be designed and allowed to operate for a year in a few select regions.” said Smith.

Complete findings of the survey haven’t been released yet. SSMPA says the next step is to forward their initial findings to decision makers to hopefully make some changes.