The North American Bison Co-operative will decide next summer where in Western Canada to locate its proposed slaughter plant .
“We will be doing our equity drive sometime this summer and depending on the outcome of that, the site will be announced after that,” said Dennis Sexhus, the group’s chief operating officer.
The co-op now has a plant in New Rockford, North Dakota, where about 4,000 bison are killed and pro-cessed each year. About 25 percent of the production is exported to Europe.
Producers increasing
Western Canada has the fastest growing population of bison and bison producers so it was a natural decision to locate a new plant north of the border, Sexhus said from New Rockford.
The group has about 250 producer-members, about a quarter of them Canadian. It has not developed its plans enough yet to put a price tag on the proposed plant, but that information should be ready in time for the equity drive, expected to begin in June 1998, Sexhus said.
