Some of the 17 provincially registered packing plants that have been accepted for an experiment aimed at increasing interprovincial meat trade may not make the grade.
Richard Arsenault, director of the Canadian Food Inspection Agency’s meat programs division, told the Canadian Cattlemen’s Association March 10 that the necessary investment may be too much for some of the plants.
Money will have to be invested to bring them up to federal standards, and ongoing operating costs likely would be higher.
Higher revenue through interprovincial sales may not be enough to cover the increased debt and higher operation costs.
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“We don’t want a bunch of plants that are bankrupt as a result of this process,” Arsenault told the CCA domestic agriculture policy committee during the association’s annual general meeting in Ottawa.
Plant operators will have to cover one-third of the costs and Ottawa and the provinces are willing to spend up to $5 million to cover the rest.
“But $5 million spread over 17 plants is not a lot of money,” he said.
Federal and provincial ministers have launched the pilot project to determine what would be required to get provincially registered plants up to a level that would allow federal registration and the right to export from the province.
When federal and provincial ministers meet again in July, they will receive a progress report on what plants might make the transition and what investments would be appropriate.
Arsenault said the change might be minimal and inexpensive in some cases. In other cases, plants would have to develop a hazard analysis critical control point system and upgrade facilities.
He said part of the pilot project is to determine if streamlining regulations would help smaller provincial plants comply with federal standards.
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