December 14, 2005

Ms. Leona Dombrowsky,
Minister of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs
Public Archives Building
77 Grenville St., 11th Floor
Toronto, Ontario
M5S 1B3

Dear Ms. Dombrowsky,

I am writing to you today because of concerns I have with the Food Safety and Quality Act, 2001, which became law this year. Specifically, I am worried about the viability of our local butcher shop: the Glebe Meat Market.

I live in the Glebe, a neighbourhood in Ottawa with a long history of owner-operated small businesses and pedestrian shopping. One of our most important stores is the Glebe Meat Market, established in 1918 and under its current ownership for 30 years.

Ms. Dombrowsky, we live in an era of grocery franchises selling over-preserved, over-packaged, under-priced, un-appetizing products. The media is full of meat processing scandals (including a recent CBC Marketplace exposé on grocery store meat departments). Corner-cutting Americanised super-chains are more focussed on bottom-line results than on providing quality products, or on training and retaining knowledgeable staff. The values demonstrated by these organisations are in direct contradiction with those held by our safe, friendly and knowledgeable local butchers.

Against this background of mediocrity, picture, if you will, a local business that is renowned for its high quality meat and meat products. A retailer that provides the personal touch and advice that is only available from a small store, and consequently that has a large following from neighbouring residents and indeed from others all over town. This store is the Glebe Meat Market. Unlike large chain stores with regional meat packing facilities, the meat sold at the Glebe Meat Market is cut on the premises, and often to order. The Glebe Meat Market carries a full selection of meats that can be hard to find elsewhere, including a full line of organic meats and even Emu. The Glebe Meat Market is a business that deserves to survive.

I know that you see the value of local independently-owned business, and of helping these small businesses to survive in the pressures of our highly competitive marketplace. That is why I am sure that you will be surprised that the biggest threat to our local butcher is not competition from large national and multi-national outfits. No, Ms. Dombrowsky, the biggest threat to our local butcher is your department’s new Food Safety and Quality Act and its associated regulations.

Under the new meat restrictions, our local butcher will now be considered a freestanding meat processor. This is because our butcher sells frozen meat pies, soup stock, locally-produced sausages and haggis. Unfortunately, your requirements for freestanding meat processors will be too much for our local butcher. Faced with the choice between continuing without their prepared products and wholesale business or closing their doors the decision is clear: The products that would be left are not enough to support an independent business. Your act will have killed another locally owned small business.

It is not a deficiency on the part of the Glebe Meat Market that will be the cause of its demise. It is the misdeeds of the cost-cutting, safety-compromising large plants that have provoked your local-business-killing new rules. The irony of the situation is that the large chains that have failed to shut down independents like the Glebe Meat Market through years of price-chopping will finally succeed; they will not succeed through competition, but by reducing quality enough to provoke a punitive, heavy-handed, regulatory framework will make independent butchering all but impossible.

The Glebe Meat Market has been selling high quality, safe, wholesome and delicious products since corner butchers were the order of the day — long before the current trend toward unsafe food practises. They have a safe and functional facility that has satisfied inspectors for decades (up to and including this year). They know how to produce meat safely. Their facility has been in operation year after year, and it has always proven itself to be adequate to the task — by any measure. Suddenly, according to your new rules, their facility is wrong and must be redesigned, re-plumbed, re-lit… to the tune of $300 000 to $500 000. It is too much.

Ms. Dombrowsky, this scenario is playing out in small businesses across the province. It is time to admit that sometimes the old ways are the good ways, and that longstanding small businesses are being hit too hard by your new rules. A local butcher should be able to produce meat and meat products without becoming a full-scale meat packing plant.

Governments should be helping to protect our small local independent businesses. Governments should not be creating a playing field slanted towards large regional operations with money to burn as they add photofinishing, dry cleaning and children’s clothing to pre-packaged food empires. If anything the field should be slanted to help protect our small and independent butcher shops.

Ontarians trust our local businesses more than big chains when it comes to safety in the food supply. Ms. Dombrowsky, we are looking to you to protect our neighbourhood businesses. It is time to take a long look at this legislation and to provide for exemptions and adjustments for safe local businesses — like our Glebe Meat Market — who produce high quality products. Your constituents are watching with hope and faith in your government. Do not let us down; act now, before it is too late.

Sincerely,
Colin Henein

cc. Glebe Meat Market; Clive Doucet, Councillor, City of Ottawa Capital Ward; Richard Patten, MPP, Ottawa-Centre; Dalton McGuinty, Premier