Manitoba’s cattle industry wants a national meat code established to help unlock markets in other provinces for its beef.
The province’s agriculture minister wants the same thing and blamed the federal government last week for dragging its heels on the issue.
“I have always been of the opinion that the federal government has been very slow moving on this regulation,” said Rosann Wowchuk, after speaking to the annual meeting of the Manitoba Cattle Producers Association in Brandon.
There is only one federally inspected plant in Manitoba that processes beef and is able to export its product outside the province. There are dozens of provincially inspected plants, but they can process only for markets within Manitoba.
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That situation stifles the province’s ability to get its beef onto store shelves in other provinces.
With a national meat code, there would be standards set for provincially inspected plants wanting to export beef to other provinces, but meeting those standards would not be as onerous or as expensive as it is to become federally inspected, Wowchuk said.
She told producers at the MCPA annual meeting that she wants to work with them toward increased slaughter capacity in the province. She said the effort to establish a national meat code has been ongoing since the late 1990s, when she became Manitoba’s agriculture minister.
She has raised the issue with federal agriculture minister Andy Mitchell and will do so again this year, she said.
MCPA president Larry Schweitzer said provincially inspected meat processors in Manitoba would have a more lucrative business if a national meat code was implemented. That would create more incentive to expand meat processing in the province, something his association also wants to see.
“This is going to be a decision of the CFIA (Canadian Food Inspection Agency),” Schweitzer said. “They’re the ones that regulate it, so they’re the ones that will make a decision on it.”
