Date: Tue, 10 Jul 2007 22:02:19 -0700 (PDT)
Subject: [KCUTS] Local agriculture being slaughtered
From: meadow@netidea.com
We're choking on new rules, say Island farmers
Jack Knox reports: Don't get Lori Gillis wrong. She believes in health
regulation...
[ more ]
We're choking on new rules, say Island farmers
Jack Knox,
Times Colonist
Published: Sunday, July 08, 2007
Lori Gillis, owner of The Cluck Stops Here chicken farm in Coombs, is
worried that
new livestock-processing rules are driving Island farms and
slaughterhouses out of
business. “Agriculture itself is being slaughtered,” says Gillis.
A funny thought coming from a woman who runs a poultry abattoir called The
Cluck
Stops Here, but she's deadly serious: At a time when Vancouver Island's
agriculture
industry is fighting to survive, she says new livestock-processing rules
are pushing
farms and slaughterhouses out of business.
All over the Island, small-scale farmers are calling it quits rather than
deal with
the higher costs associated with new provincial meat-inspection
regulations that
take effect Oct. 1. "Agriculture itself is being slaughtered," says Gillis --
Chicken Lori to her friends.
But B.C. Agriculture Minister Pat Bell argues the new rules, which replace a
patchwork of regulations, are needed to protect public health. "Walkerton
was a
wake-up call for governments across Canada."
It's a matter of setting basic sanitary standards, ensuring that, for
example, meat
is cooled quickly enough or animals are killed humanely. Individuals are
eligible
for grants of up to $50,000 to make the upgrades. The government is
working with
around 55 B.C. abattoirs, has licensed about 20 so far.
But farmers reply that the rules, dictating everything from ceiling height
to the
size of floor drains, are often nonsensical and disproportionate to any
actual
threat.
"You've got Wal-Mart regulations imposed on the corner store," says
Gillis, who says
she has already lost 40 per cent of her work. "The business is as good as
dead."
Gillis's fears are repeated by Vancouver Island's Farmers Institutes.
"Farmers have
already stopped raising sheep, pigs, cattle and poultry because they fear
there will
be nowhere to take them for slaughter," they said in a joint press release
that
described agriculture as being in crisis.
The slaughtering rules are, in fact, just one of the hurdles facing
farmers on
Vancouver Island. They must also deal with the erosion of the Agricultural
Land
Reserve, high property prices, dwindling infrastructure, rising fuel
costs, water
problems, competition from cheap imports and an aging workforce.
The decline in livestock production is reflected in Statistics Canada's
census
numbers: The number of Vancouver Island farms with beef cattle fell from
460 to 353
between 2001 and 2006. Sheep farms went from 125 to 117, dairy farms from
96 to 74.
The poultry industry has been in decline since Langford's Lilydale
processing plant
closed in 1999.
And it's not just livestock: The total area of land being farmed on
Vancouver Island
dropped to 54,000 hectares last year, down from 60,000 just five years
earlier.
Whether they be big or small, growing livestock or produce, farms are
having a hard
time hanging on.
The irony is that agriculture is declining just as consumers buy into the
notion of
the 100-Mile Diet, the idea that it's healthier for both body and
environment to eat
good, locally grown food.
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