Michelle Dorey Forestell, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter, Kingstonist.com

“Where’s the beef?” an iconic little old lady demanded to know in a 1984 commercial. According to local farmers, the questions many of us need to consider 40 years later are “Where did the beef come from? How did the beef get here? What’s in the beef?” and “Will the beef still be available tomorrow?”

The loss of Quinn’s Meats in Yarker to a fire in early summer 2024 was devastating for the Enright family, who owned the business, and the local meat producers, who lost product in the fire. However, according to area farmers, the writing has been on the wall for much longer: local meat processing is in trouble, and that means much more than the average consumer may realize.

In the wake of the fire at Quinn’s, Kingstonist delved into what the loss of the last abattoir in the Kingston, Frontenac, Lennox, and Addington region meant to the local farmers. Months later, with summer long over and fall nearing its end, little progress has been made to relieve the crisis. 

When it comes to beef, Brian Windover of Bayview Farms in Napanee raises beef calves until they are weaned and ready to be sold to backgrounding lots. Backgrounders raise the cattle until they enter the feedlot, where they are placed on a high-energy finishing ration. The process of backgrounding controls weight gain so that cattle gain enough muscle and bone before laying down fat covering and marbling in the feedlot. Typically, backgrounding involves raising cattle up to about 410 kg (900 lb) in body weight. 

Windover pointed out that two main companies determine the cost of beef, and because of that lack of competition, small and medium beef farms can’t compete, “There’s basically three main packing plants. Two of them are owned by Cargill; one is owned by JBS [Foods]. They process 70 per cent of all the beef in Canada,” he said.

Cargill Canada is a subsidiary of Minneapolis-based Cargill Incorporated. According to Forbes, it is America’s largest private company, with revenues of $177 billion, and it is owned by the Cargill-MacMillan family. JBS Foods Canada is owned by JBS S.A., a Brazilian-based company that is the world’s largest protein producer and the second-largest food company. 

Lack of competition hurts small operations

That lack of competition is a big problem for smaller farmers and consumers, Windover explained. 

“Those packers control the entire [Canadian] beef industry. They control what the farmers are paid for live cattle. They control what the retailers or the grocers have to pay for beef… And the other problem is, if one of them goes down, whether it be a strike, COVID, a fire, whatever, it just devastates the entire beef industry because there’s nowhere that you can go to make up for the capacity that those plants have,” he said.

Windover said that for any farmer trying to do small-scale direct sales to consumers, this “has a huge impact.”

“We still [process] a few beef a year where we sell a little bit of ground beef. And we’re booking like a year in advance to try to get a spot at an abattoir,” he offered, for example, nothing that he uses Hastings Meat in Stirling, Ontario.

“It’s from one cow, and it’s all the cuts. But for us, it’s about $1,000 to get a cow processed. For our last ground beef, we were charging $7 a pound. I can’t compete price-wise with the ground beef in grocery stores because it isn’t the same product.”

Windover pointed out that trying to get people to understand that his ground beef is better because it contains the choicer cuts of meat all from the same cow is difficult. Most consumers don’t think about the ground beef they pick up at the grocery store, or that it contains the leftovers of meat from hundreds of different slaughtered animals. 

“But obviously, a small abattoir that does 20 animals a week can’t compete price-wise with a place that’s doing hundreds or thousands a day,” he said.

“We need those big packers,” Windover acknowledged, “but we also need competition. And the lack of competition in the beef processing sector hurts everybody. It hurts the farmers and it hurts the consumers; it hurts the grocers because they only have one place to get it from, right?”

And those smaller competing abattoirs and butchers are dying off fast. According to Ontario’s Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Agribusiness, in 2021, there were 115 provincially licensed abattoirs, abattoirs that conduct further processing, freestanding meat plants, and plants that specialize in the slaughter of all the various animals. According to the province, 82 of those process beef. Compare that to 1999, when there were 229 provincially licensed abattoirs in Ontario.

Farmers frustrated over policy changes and stringent rules

Windover blames the “never-ending constant change of regulations,” saying, “We all understand that food safety is important, but there needs to be a set of standards that are followed, and you stick with those, and not just constantly changing every couple of years.”

Small abattoirs, he explained, “just cannot afford to continuously upgrade their businesses to meet the ever-changing regulations they come up with. And then they finally say ‘Enough’s enough’ and shut down.”

An acquaintance of Windover told him back in the 1990s that it would have cost him about a quarter of a million dollars to upgrade his facility to meet the next round of changes. “He said, ‘I’d never make that back,’ so he just shut it down. So you might spend that quarter million dollars, and five years down the road, you might have spent another quarter million dollars because it’s a never-ending rotation of changes and policies.” 

Government’s perspective, producers’ responses

To better understand the government’s perspective on the capacity crisis, Kingstonist reached out to the Honourable Rob Flack, who became Ontario’s Minister of Agriculture, Food and Agribusiness (OMAFA) in June. Christa Roettele, an OMAFA representative, responded, “Our government understands the importance of having abattoirs across the province that can accommodate local demand. That’s why we have funded programs to help modernize and boost processing capacity and connect producers with processing facilities.”

Cory Priest, owner of Thorpe Farms, and Janet Creasy, owner of Cedarstone Acres, both meat producers with farms in Odessa, say the answers provided are unacceptable.

Readers may recall that Priest unsuccessfully attempted to open a new state-of-the-art abattoir in Napanee just two years ago. That project fell through because of a lack of funding. The planned facility would have treated animals humanely, allowing them a kinder end than large factory processing facilities. Thorpe was even set to partner with St. Lawrence College to train new butchers, a much-needed but disappearing skilled trade.

Creasy remembers that Priest “had everything in place. He had an agreement to purchase land in Napanee’s industrial park. It was perfect because it was a larger lot with water, sewer, and three-phase electricity. He even had everything set to go with loans through BDC (Business Development Bank of Canada)… but he needed that down payment and community equity to get everything rolling.”

In her message, Roettele pointed to initiatives provided through the Sustainable Canadian Agricultural Partnership (Sustainable CAP). These programs are cost-shared between the federal and provincial governments, with the federal government contributing 60 per cent of the costs and the provincial government contributing 40 per cent. However, the provinces develop and deliver the programs with their own specific needs and wants in mind.

OMAFA gave Kingstonist the names and links to four different funding programs currently available from the Ontario government, including the $5 million Food Safety and Growth Initiative, $13 million Meat Processors Capacity Improvement Initiative,  $25 million Strategic Agri-Food Processing Fund, and $22.6 million Agri-Tech Innovation Initiative. 

The Ontario government also touted its investment of “over $450,000 in the ProcessorLinks platform since 2021, which connects farmers to abattoirs that have processing capacity,” and said, “We will continue working to help meet the needs of Ontario’s agricultural community.” 

Priest was not impressed with the ministry’s response, saying, “As was the case when we pitched the new abattoir back in 2022, these blanket responses and links do little to tackle the issue of accurate and timely abattoir servicing.”

First of all, ProcessorLinks is useless to Priest and anyone in the local area, he said, because if an abattoir has processing available, it is hours and hours away. Requiring hours of travel for the animals that are headed to slaughter is stressful for both farmers and animals. 

Further, he said, “The only possible grant option of the four the government listed that applies to new capacity is the Strategic Fund. All the rest are aimed at upgrading existing operations [not building new ones].”

Priest said he has attempted to procure this kind of funding for the Napanee abattoir project: “We applied to a few of these funds to check capital availability. The process is extremely detailed and so in-depth it was recommended to us to hire a grant writer [because] if your application isn’t perfect, it’s rejected.”

Also, most land deals and other contracts have tight closing deadlines, he explained, “so if the application is rejected, there isn’t time to resubmit a corrected application for consideration before the closing date.”

“At an average cost of $2,500-$5,000 an application plus additional government fees, it isn’t cheap,” he pointed out. 

“We were approved for some grant capital, but the unreasonable time frame didn’t work with our project. It was structured so that we paid upfront and then provided receipts afterward to collect grant funds.” Priest pointed out that paying millions or even thousands up front is “less than ideal for a new business startup.”

“At the end of the day, the existing capacity does not meet the current demand,” Priest stated. “After the past 10 years of fighting and clawing my way through the meat processing industry and learning everything we have learned — right from breeding stock through feeding and nutrition to end-of-life processing — I am only convinced of one thing: lack of capacity is the problem. And for some reason, no level of government wants to tackle the issue.”

“I can only assume that if grants and funding are only being offered to existing operations, then the government is happy with the level of processing we currently have,” he concluded, suggesting, “I get the feeling the voting public isn’t heard as well as [political] donors.”

Janet Creasy pointed out that, for the average consumer, it is easy to think that food is abundant “because it’s on our grocery store shelves.”

“We are a fortunate country. Food is available pretty much all the time and isn’t a huge part of our overall yearly expenses for most families. It is not that way in many countries where food is more expensive, and I think Canadians have generally come to expect cheap food that is reliably available and good enough,” said Creasy.

“When COVID struck and things closed down in 2020, I’m sure it was a shock to many people that grocery store shelves… suffered as the supply chains failed. Certainly, with our small farm, we had a surprising increase in customers looking for farm-fresh eggs and meat. Perhaps some of that was as much an opportunity for people to get out, go for a drive, and just get out of their homes during that COVID lockdown, but also because of food shortages in the grocery stores. I had really hoped that lesson would stick with folks, but I’m afraid it has not,” she expressed.

“People need to understand that cheap food is not always better,” Creasy reiterated. “Abattoirs may not be exciting, but we need them. Somehow, we need to tip politicians into actively supporting the creation of a new facility in this area. The catchment area is huge.”

The future of meat production locally

As for Quinn’s, no one locally knows what the future holds. Creasy and the others pointed out that the Enrights had been so busy processing their own meat before the fire that they barely had time to take in meat from other local farmers anymore.

The community pulled together to organize a benefit dance for the Enright family and Quinn’s Meats in September 2024. This event, Kara Enright said, “was extremely well attended and supported by the community, friends, family, and organizations. We were very humbled by the entire event and [the] support demonstrated.”

“We are currently working with contractors to determine a design and cost to rebuild something similar that would meet OMAFA’s current regulations. From there, we will determine what insurance will and will not cover, and then what we can afford,” she said. “So we do not have any final decisions made on the rebuild yet.”  

She chose not to answer the question of whether a rebuild, if any, would occur at the former site in Yarker or closer to their home farm, Enright Cattle in Tweed.

But Enright did say in response to questions, “We have not had any help from the government to get us back up and running.”

Local Member of Provincial Parliament (MPP) for Hastings—Lennox and Addington, Ric Bresee, answered a request for information saying: “My office, along with the Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Agri-business, has recognized the capacity challenges in the meat processing industry across Ontario, particularly in Eastern Ontario. This situation was unfortunately worsened by the tragic loss of Quinn’s Meats. Our office has been in touch with the team at Quinn’s Meats, providing direction and offering support as they explore their options for redevelopment. We remain committed to working towards the expansion of meat processing capacity throughout Eastern Ontario.”

Ted Hsu, MPP for Kingston and the Islands, recently circulated a Community Update in which he stated that he recognized “the abattoir shortage is hurting farmers, small businesses, and consumers.”

Hsu said he has approached the federal government about “an emergency restart of the Joyceville Institution abattoir,” noting, “Crises like this require multi-jurisdictional collaboration. I’ll see that the issue has the attention of Ontario’s new agriculture minister.”

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