Eating local takes a hit
Friday, August 21, 2009 | 12:28 PM ET
By Kevin Yarr, CBCNews.ca
As much as people in the Maritimes might like to eat local, it's getting difficult and is only going to get harder.
So far, vegetables are not much of an issue, but getting local meat is trickier. In Charlottetown, I can get this from local producers at the Farmer's Market, but that's not practical on a large scale.
Take pork, in particular. Even if I buy P.E.I. pork in Charlottetown, that hog would have been transported to Berwick, N.S., slaughtered, butchered, then returned here. There is no longer a pork processing plant on P.E.I. It closed last year.
P.E.I. pork travels close 850 km from the farm to my plate. So really, as far as large-scale commercial goes, there is no such thing as P.E.I. pork. It is best described as Maritime pork.
And it could soon get worse.
This has been a terrible time for pork farmers. Prices below the cost of production have persisted for years. What looked like it might be a recovery year failed due to a mistaken belief that swine flu could be contracted by eating pork.
In 2002, there were about 400 hog farmers on P.E.I. Today, there are about 30. — P.E.I. Hog Commodity Marketing Board
What not long ago was a thriving industry is on the brink of disappearing on P.E.I. In 2002 there were about 400 hog farmers on the Island. In July the P.E.I. Hog Commodity Marketing Board said there are about 30 left.
This week, provincial Agriculture Minister George Webster warned they might not last much longer. Perversely, he placed the blame on a federal aid program.
There are still plenty of hog farmers in the west. Too many, the federal government believes, and they are offering $75 million to encourage some farmers to exit the industry or simply sell off some herds. The goal is to reduce supply and, hopefully, raise prices.
But that offer is also open to Maritime farmers. If even a moderate number of farmers take advantage of the program, Webster believes, the region's processing plants could find themselves in a situation where they don't have enough hogs to stay in business. Any remaining producers would be looking at shipping out of the region, not a financially viable prospect.
And that would mean eating locally, on any kind of significant scale, would simply not be a choice any more.
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From trends and culture to politics and nutrition, Food Bytes serves up tasty tidbits about food and the issues surrounding it that flavour our everyday lives.
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Amber Hildebrandt writes for CBCNews.ca in Toronto. Growing up on a farm in Manitoba, she acquired an insatiable appetite, but it was during a stint in Japan that she developed her discerning tastebuds and "foodie" ways.
Andrea Chiu is an associate producer at CBC Radio Digital. Though she loves to eat, cook and discuss food,
don't ask her to bake. It never turns out well. She tweets as @TOfoodie on Twitter and organizes food and wine events in Toronto called FoodieMeet.
Tara Kimura is the consumer life reporter for CBCNews.ca, covering a wide range of issues that range from rising food costs and the growing organic movement, to new trends in the marketplace.
Andree Lau is a CBC web reporter in Calgary. Her journalism career includes seven years as a CBC-TV reporter. Her own blog called "are you gonna eat that?" chronicles her eating adventures (including sampling snake and camel hoof tendon).
Jessica Wong is a CBCNews.ca writer who loves to eat and cook, as well as discuss, read and watch programming about food, sometimes all at once.
Kevin Yarr, CBCNews.ca's writer in Prince Edward Island, wrote about food and beer for national and regional magazines before joining the CBC. He acquired a desire for new tastes on his first trip to Europe, and an appreciation of eating locally and in season when he finally settled down on P.E.I.
Elizabeth Bridge is a writer with the CBC Digital Archives in Toronto. She first ventured into the kitchen as a child to indulge a sweet tooth by baking cookies and making fudge. A student budget compelled her to be a vegetarian (for a while) and instilled in her an ongoing curiosity about food and cooking.
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Comments
Jenn
Halifax
This news is very disappointing, as I have tried very hard to support NS hog farmers. Pork has gotten a bad rep in past years and so many health conscious people opt to eat nothing but chicken, but pork can be a very healthy and delicious choice.
I'll continue to buy local pork as much as I can and hope maritime pork farmers and producers can weather the storm.
Posted August 21, 2009 06:23 PM
Tina Brooks
Montreal
One of the most difficult things about the local food move movement is the inability for meat farmers to do their own slaughter anymore.
The law is so hellbent on ensuring that nobody ever gets sick that all meat regardless of where it is grown has to be slain and dressed in a federally inspected facility. That means small producers are lumped onto the same machines as the big guys. You might as well have bought the mass-produced meat.
This is just another example of why BIG MASS PRODUCTION food plants have to be toned down. Difficulties with eradicating Listeriosis before it enters the food chain highlights my point.
And why do we do this? It is simply because the Canada Food Inspection Agency does not have the manpower to manage all of the large food processors, so, they put all the small food processors out of business.
I ask you... What do you want, good food or mass produced crap? Because if it's the former, you'd best start reading the labels on your food.
Just what exactly are you eating?
Posted August 24, 2009 10:43 AM
Hmmmm
mb
Kevin, mind your modifiers: "LocalLY!"
(On behalf of the coalition for the re-instatement of adverbs)
Posted September 3, 2009 03:26 AM
Joe
We spent a year in Poland many years ago - 1975 - Poland under communism. There was a de-facto eat local economy - little was imported except for things like Russian cranberry sauce [?!] and Bulgarian fruit juice.
Summer is a GREAT TIME for eating locally - straw berries, goose berries, peaches, plums. For about 2 weeks each sequentially.
Winter was the time of cold storage eggs, beets, potatoes, onions and carrots. And forget the meat - sausage and a few skinny chickens were it.
Fortunately there was packaged cheese, and canned fish in the stores.
And of course great BREAD!
But we had a wonderful time nonetheless.
Posted September 6, 2009 06:50 AM