Producers of meat other than beef feel they’ve been unfairly treated by Canada and by foreign countries that have stopped imports of their animals.
“We feel lost in the shuffle,” said Linda Sautner of the Alberta Bison Commission.
The federal government announced non-beef ruminants would be included in the $460 million bovine spongiform encephalopathy recovery program June 18, but the rules for animals like bison and elk weren’t released until Aug. 8, after the race to the slaughter plants began.
By the time the rules were released, most of the abattoirs or slaughter plants were booked solid with cattle and there was a three to six-week waiting period.
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Under the program, only animals slaughtered were eligible for compensation.
“We feel we have been treated unfairly,” said Sautner. “Ninety-five percent of producers could not get any animals booked.”
In Alberta, about 540,000 cattle and 6,000 bison were slaughtered under the program.
“It’s almost impossible to get an elk into a slaughter plant,” said Bob Kirkpatrick, a bison and elk producer from Cabri, Sask.”There isn’t hardly any slaughter plants, other than domestic, that we can use in the first place.”
It’s a comment often heard by government officials.
“Certainly they’ve been saying it’s a challenge to get animals slaughtered,” said Dave Boehm with Saskatchewan Agriculture.
In Saskatchewan, about 46,000 animals were slaughtered under the BSE program and only a handful weren’t cattle.
But Boehm warns not to read too much into the numbers because traditionally the cattle sector is much larger than all other livestock industries combined.
John Knapp, with Alberta Agriculture’s rural services division, said his department is getting calls from alternative livestock producers about the BSE program.
“We are certainly mindful of what the other sectors are saying. We are certainly prepared to take the calls under advisement and review some options,” said Knapp, who added he knows of no additional program being developed for diversified livestock producers.
In Manitoba, about 19,000 cattle were slaughtered under the program 2,900 sheep, 99 bison and six elk. Because Manitoba doesn’t have a large packing plant, the sheep were slaughtered in Eastern Canada and the cattle were sent out of province or killed at small abattoirs.
Bison and elk can’t leave the province because of health regulations, so producers had to find someone within the province to slaughter their animals.
Manitoba doesn’t have large slaughter plants, just a limited number of smaller abattoirs, said Al Steinke with Manitoba Crop Insurance Corp., which is administering the program.
Lori Borley, office manager with Valley Meats in the Manitoba Rural Municipality of Minitonas, said the company has turned down hundreds of requests to have animals slaughtered.
In a normal week the plant can kill about 20 head. It did an emergency kill of eight elk at the end of August so one producer could qualify for compensation.
The producer was charged extra for the rush.
Even in negotiations to reopen the border between Canada and the United States, the diversified livestock industries feel left out, said Sautner.
The border to Mexico and U.S. was opened a crack to beef, but less to other animals.
U.S. agriculture secretary Ann Veneman announced the border would open after Sept. 1 to boneless meat from sheep or goats younger than one year, boneless beef from animals under 30 months and boneless veal from animals under 36 weeks.
Quick changes aren’t likley for non-beef ruminants, said Susan Robertson, a spokesperson for Agriculture Canada.
