The president of the Cattlemen’s Association calls the closure of Green Valley Beef Farm in the Northern Arm a “huge loss”.
Green Valley’s Troy Humber was excited when the opportunity arose to apply for a regional slaughterhouse in Central Newfoundland, but two years later he had to lay off staff, close a brand new facility and get out of the beef business altogether.
Humber says the bureaucratic red tape and mess of trying to come up with an acceptable waste disposal option didn’t get ahead of him, and he lost $1.2 million of his own money.
His initial proposal, which was accepted, proposed a composting, burying and digging model that was used across the province, but, Humber says, that was no longer acceptable.
He was then told to take the waste to the incinerator on Brookfield Road in St John’s. The problem with that, according to Humber, is the distance, the fact that the facility can only hold one or two animals per week and it doesn’t have a permit from the Canadian Food Inspection Agency, which is the authority to dispose of specific risk material.
Nelson Fagan of the Cattlemen’s Association has a cattle farm and abattoir in CBS. He says most of the beef consumed in Newfoundland and Labrador is transported by truck and the province needs more slaughterhouses if the local red meat market is to grow.
He says there are less than 30 licensed slaughterhouses in the province and some of them are for white meat only.
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