Maple Leaf Foods is working toward adding a second shift to its Brandon slaughter plant – a move that will benefit prairie producers and could avert a disaster if American country-of-origin labelling laws are implemented, said Perry Mohr, the general manager of Manitoba Pork Marketing Co-operative.
“It’s an absolutely positive development,” said Mohr about the City of Brandon’s application to double the capacity of its waste water treatment plant.
“They have to get a second shift going.”
Brandon’s waste water treatment plant processes the waste flowing out of the hog slaughter plant. It does not now have capacity to handle the extra waste produced by a second shift at the plant, so Maple Leaf cannot add that shift until the expansion is completed.
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Maple Leaf Foods’ corporate director of environmental affairs, Anne Tennier, said her company will need about a year and a half to get the second shift running.
First, the waste water treatment plant’s expansion must be approved by Manitoba’s environment department. That could take six months.
The slaughter plant’s barns, coolers and freezers will also need to be expanded. Right now, the plant kills 54,000 hogs per week. A second shift would raise that to 108,000.
“It’s fulfilling what we expected would happen,” said Tennier.
Autumn 2004 is a frightening deadline for prairie hog producers.
That is when U.S. country-of-origin labelling laws are expected to be activated. Many American processors have said they will avoid buying Canadian hogs if the meat from those animals must be separately labeled.
Weanling buyers are also worried about whether Canadian-born but U.S.-raised animals would have to be segregated.
Right now, millions of prairie weanlings and slaughter hogs are sent to the U.S.
If American buyers stop accepting Canadian pigs, there could be chaos and a price crash in Canada, analysts warn.
That’s why Mohr was cheered by the news that the process of launching a second shift at the Brandon plant had finally begun.
“Whatever happens, this is a good thing,” said Mohr.
Maple Leaf Foods hopes the move to a second shift will be seen as good for the environment.
It says new technologies that will be used in modifying the waste water treatment plant will allow twice the water to be treated, and will reduce nitrogen and phosphorus emissions.
