Smaller regional food processors boost worker safety, say advocates
Small-scale meat producers are pressing the government to allow more local slaughter and meat-processing facilities across the province to improve B.C.’s food security.
Their argument has taken on greater urgency as large chicken and beef processing plants are struggling with large COVID-19 outbreaks.
“COVID-19 has given us the opportunity to take a serious look at these systems and re-evaluate the benefits of decentralizing meat processing,” said Julia Smith, president of the Small-Scale Meat Producers Association.
The association is calling for new regulations that would enable smallscale producers and processors to build more regional meat-processing facilities.
Restrictions on on-farm slaughter and a lack of capacity for small producers in the meat-processing system are serious barriers to the growth of local meat production, she said.
Depending on just a handful of massive meat-processing facilities in other parts of the country also leaves British Columbians at risk of supply interruptions and price shocks.
Large plants also come with their own health and safety concerns.
“Managing workplace health challenges like COVID-19 or product recalls is much more easily achieved when dealing with small-scale plants than large facilities,” Smith said.
Small producers also pay closer attention to animal welfare, and traceability is enhanced when there are fewer stops in the supply chain, she said.
Most of B.C.’s 2,900 food processors have avoided significant problems with COVID-19. Many are small businesses with niche products.
The exception is poultry processing. Outbreaks at Superior Poultry and United Poultry have sickened dozens of workers.
Large, centralized beef processing facilities in Alberta and the United States have seen hundreds of employees fall ill, sparking outbreaks in the larger community and interrupting the food supply chain.
“We’ve been hit in poultry processing, and elsewhere it’s beef,” said Dalhousie professor Sylvain Charlebois. “The fact is that many of our plants need to be retrofitted.”
Some of the biggest meat-processing plants in the country are aging and working conditions are crowded.
“I think the newest plant to be hit (by COVID-19) is 31 years old, and most are much older,” he said. “They have invested over the years, but it is patchwork. It was good patchwork, really, but it didn’t anticipate a pandemic.”
The federal government on Tuesday announced $252 million to help farmers and food processors weather the coronavirus outbreak, with $77 million targeted to protective equipment and health protocols, and to increase production capacity.
“We haven’t heard anything about food processors in Europe having this problem,” said Charlebois. “Their food economies are regionalized, the plants are smaller and more modern. The average age of a food plant in Europe is 17 years, in Canada it’s over 30.”
B.C. processors tend to be small, nimble and able to adapt, and that has helped keep a lid on COVID-19, said James Donaldson, CEO of the B.C. Food Processors Association.
“But some facilities just haven’t been designed to allow safe distancing,” he said. “That will have to be revisited to factor in physical distancing in a more disciplined way.”
Companies have improvised in a number of ways, paying more attention to touch points and common areas such as lunchrooms. On the production floor, they have tried adding shields.
“Over time, they will have to invest in the plant floor and that will be long-term investment,” he said. “It will cost money, but hopefully they can offset some of that with increased efficiency. I’m already seeing companies pivot from adaptation to focusing on recovery.”
While the industry adjusts, renovates and retrofits to address a new reality of contagion, food prices will rise.
“The architecture of the industry is built on demand for cheap food, but with this predicament we are in, prices are going to go up and they will stay up for a while,” said Charlebois.