“One bad moment.”
That short sentence struck a chord with me this week, as a local farmer was describing how she wants her animals to be treated right up to them meeting their final days.
This is coming from a woman who cares for her cattle and provides the best life possible to them.
She keeps a clean farm, tidy gardens, and works tirelessly day in and day out to ensure her ship is run as tightly as possible.
A farm in Golden has held their Class E licence for many years, meaning they have been allowed to slaughter up to 10 animal units on their farm annually. After the cattle are killed, they are loaded up and driven an hour and a half to a facility that will do the rest.
Regularly, an inspector will go to the farm to make sure everything is done in a clean and humane way. Every time, this farm passes the test without issue.
Now, thanks to new regulation, this farm will be unable to renew their Class E licence.
The licence has allowed them to save their cattle the hassle of being rounded up, loaded into a trailer, and hauled down the highway to Invermere. Upon arrival, they will have to exit the trailer into an unknown place, where they will be held on standby until they are ready to be slaughtered.
An abattoir is a great place for farmers to go who want to sell their meat commercially, or who want to slaughter more than the allowable 10 units with a Class E licence. But, for the small farmer who only sells meat off her farm, to friends and family, and at farmer’s markets, the stress on everyone involved is more than necessary.
The entire process is bureaucratic, and is just a means to ensure the government has its hands in small farmers’ pockets. In order to truly promote buying local and supporting our agriculture industry, we need to see it from all sides. Abattoirs are necessary for many different types of people, from large-scale farmers to hunters and trappers, but this isn’t a one-size-fits-all situation.
Eliminating the requirement that all farmers within a two-hour radius of an abattoir must have their livestock slaughtered in a facility would alleviate many difficulties from wait times, to the stress on small farmers to deliver their livestock to the facility, and more.
Most importantly, it would ensure that many more animals only had “one bad moment” in their otherwise happy and well-looked-after lives.
