Wednesday, February 08, 2006

Many local BC slaughterhouses face closure

This is not new information but the day draws closer when your local slaughterhouse might be no more. My adage of buying food from someone you know will then become a lot more difficult to fulfill for many of us. Here's an update and some examples on how things stand now:

Can't Slaughter Like You Used To

Saturna Island lamb barbeque

New meat regs may end small farmers' way of life.

By Heather Ramsay
Published: February 8, 2006 - TheTyee.ca


There is a woman in Skidegate who has been buying a side of beef from Richardson Ranch on Haida Gwaii since 1955. The steaks and roasts she's been eating all these years come from animals raised on meandering grasslands by the sea; a 20 minute drive up the coast.

Read on

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Read this article and am saddened by the overall concept. Just another government pandering to large scale polluters selling garbage. Forcing all peoples to be poisoned by the same type of product. Sounds like a gun registration for food.
"A hypocrite
is the kind of politician that would cut down a redwood tree, then mount the stump and make a speech for conservation."
Adlai E. Stevenson

Anonymous said...

Well, it is now 2008 and the predictions are coming true. Cow calf producers are now caught in that for many of them the only thing they can do is send their calves to auction in the fall. We are trying to build a slaughter house in Quesnel, as the closest facilities are a two hour drive away and with the cost of fuel it becomes prohibitive to try to market your own beef. Thirty farmers have dispersed their herds in the Quesnel area in the past year and with only three months into 2008 another eight farmers are about to disperse this spring. The hog farmers are in terrible straits as well, as no one is interested in weiners because there is no way to get someone to come to your home to slaugther them. It is truly heartbreaking to see what is happening.

Anonymous said...

I am still amazed by the number of folks who are completely unaware of what is happening to our food system. Here is another article that I wrote on the subject that may be of interest.
http://howlingduckranch.wordpress.com/2008/11/16/food-security-food-sovereignty-tasty-rhetoric-unpalatable-realities/

I'm still puzzling about how to engage the public and get the info out there. I have a dream of consumer outrage that helps change the system back to a sane one.

Keep up the good work!

HDR

Anonymous said...

As Karl Polanyi said in his book, 'The Great Transformation', "Control the food and you control the people."

Without access to food, we are all incredibly dependent upon the Corporate agricultural production and distribution system. It is not a good place to be.

HDR