Participants at the semi-annual meeting of Federal, Provincial and Territorial Ministers of Agriculture (courtesy AAFC.)

Provincially-inspected slaughter facilities may soon be able to market their product in other provinces.

Federal, provincial and territorial agriculture ministers met in Toronto yesterday. The ministers announced the launch of 19 pilot projects aimed at expanding inter-provincial meat trade.

 

"The idea is to go to a provincially-regulated plant and still be able to use that facility and maintain the national standard," says Federal Agriculture Minister Gerry Ritz. "What we want to do is go through the list of requirements under federal standards and find out what we can do to simplify or make them fit in a smaller operation."

 

"We may have 16 pages on washing your hands for a factory processor that has five or six hundred employees, but when you employ five maybe you don't need 37 pages to explain it," he says.

 

The ministers also continued discussions on the next agricultural policy framework, currently known as Growing Forward 2. The current Growing Forward framework expires in 2013.

 

The next FPT meeting will be held July 7-8 in St. Andrews, New Brunswick.