W-5 on meat production

[cakadu]

This weekend's topic for W-5 is meat processing. If you get a chance, I would encourage you to watch it. Depending on what the message is in this (and from the trailer it didn't look too positive) this could be coming at a very bad time.

[carebear300]

I watched the show and it really wasn't too surprising to me. It all comes down that the unscrupulous will break and disregard the rules for profit no matter what. The thing that disturbs me most is that it will get those important voters in Toronto all stirred up and the federal government will pass a bunch of new regulations that will make it just about impossible for a person to butcher his own beef. And maybe not even so much the butchering but if you do butcher your own maybe they will pass a law that is illegal for the local locker plant to process uninspected beef. Maybe I am worrying too much but after that dam fool gun control bill anything is possible.

[cakadu]

Carebear, there weren't too many surprises in that show - for those of us on the farm and involved in livestock production - we're aware of the "backyarders". When the inspectors work Monday to Friday the off-hours are not going to be regulated the way they could be. (The bruises on that pigeon were something else.)

It wasn't all that long ago that livestock were processed on the farm everyday, but of course that was generally for the immediate family's use, which by law in Alberta is legal to do.

There is a reason there is going to be harmonization between provinces of provincially inspected plants - it was intended to bring them all to a certain level. This is supposed to come about by 2005 - they'll all have to be at a certain level of cleanliness, HACCP etc. As a result of this, we'll likely see many of the "mom and pop" operations decide to close their doors as it will probably be too expensive for them to bring their operations to this level. The target date of 2005 has been in the works for a number of years, so it is coming as no surprise to the provincial plants. It will be interesting to see how many of them close and who will step up to the plate in order bring the plant to certain specifications.

I'm not sure how people are going to react to this story - I suppose one could see if they have a message board and go to it and see what is being written about this story. Will they run around like chicken little or will it cause them to go to their local butcher shops and find out how their food is coming to them. Will it create more vegetarians - I don't know.

I don't necessarily see this as a bad thing because people need to be aware of how their food is produced. If the result is that they become more informed about their food, then that is a good thing.