impact of new meat inspection rules

[bckev]

Hi
I am wondering if people here are aware of the changes the government is putting in for livestock producers around mandatory meat inspections. It affects me as a small scale organic producer who does some of his own butchering and takes larger animals to a small processor. The processor will not be able to stay in business and I won't be able to process any thing of my own. How I see it affecting hunters will be the impact on meat cutters and the loss of work putting them out of business, and or the rules that may affect whether they can cut game meat on premise. Has anyone heard of their local cutters being affected by this yet. It has been pushed back to 2007 now,but I have heard of a couple of small butcher shops already shutting down.

[Steeleco]

Great all we need is more stupid rules. Why can't they just leave well enough alone.

[bckev]

Stupid rules breed prolifically, hence the onerous amount of them.

[3kills]

yeah me just gettin in to the field have heard a lil bit about it...but i m not sure how much it will effect shops...i know a lil shop in merritt here that is just startin to get bigger and is now puttin in a kill floor....

[Fred]

Ex and I heard about it last season in Groundbirch. It will mostly affect ranchers who do their own butchering or rudimentry prepwork like the Buff ranches. Fred

[bckev]

It will affect every small shop that does slaughtering, as well as the people who slaughter for sale to others at their farm. If the slaughter facilities can't afford to upgrade and hire inspectors they will be out of luck. The off shoot of that is the small butchers who rely on the small abatoirs etc.

[~T-BONE~]

Being a Foreman at a family owned slaughter plant in chilliwack we are feeling the effects of BSE first hand because we are home base for the head vet and the majority of inspection staff in Fraser Valley east{being the lagest plant this end of the valley.} The rules and regulations that are being pushed have alot of impact on the indutstry hitting us first and to be honest much of it does not make sense. As far as processing costs and labour go our animal waste costs went from recieving $.03lb to paying $.05lb totaling an charge of aorund $20,000 a month. We also have to remove the backbone on all cattle of 30 months of age or older which ends up being an xtra cost to the customer having his animal processed.
But as far as game cutting is concerned it will probably be mandatory that butchers wanting to cut game will have to have a room and cooler designated to game and game only! We should hope that Chronic Wasting disease dosen't hit B.C. because who knows where they will go with that???:confused: :confused: :confused: :confused:

[ryanb]

The only reason these stupid rules keep popping up is the government needs to be doing SOMETHING, otherwise they'd be out of a job, so they come up with stupid rules all the time to keep themselves busy.

[bckev]

T-Bone do you have an inspector on site, or will you have to get one and if so what kind of cost will that run.

[~T-BONE~]

BCkev as far as inspecters go we have 4 that rotate throughout the day. They actully work underneath the vet whom is in charege of all happenings! They seem to be training quite a few newbies these days as there is a high demand for inspection staff. As far as company costs of the Insp. staff goes I'm not sure but I believe entry level Insp. make about 35k per year..

[Barracuda]

where would one find out about becoming an inspector??