Pork plant meeting turns emotional

By Lawrence Gleason
Battle lines were drawn more firmly in a Friday Calahoo meeting over a pork plant processing plant’s location, but the larger picture for many is that this issue may decide the limits of what Sturgeon County farmers can do to add value to their agricultural products while cutting out middle men in the marketing chain.

About 160 people attended the information meeting on the planned 800 hog per day processing facility for which no Sturgeon County development application has yet been filed.

A panel of experts invited questions on the plant plans proposed to be built on 50 acres on the north side of Highway 37, about two kilometres east of its junction with Highway 44 and questions asked included water and waste water issues and why this particular site was chosen.

It was an opportunity for project opponents to provide vocal and sometimes emotional opposition. Opponents of the project have formed into an organization they call CASP37, for the Committee against Slaughter Plant Highway 37. The CASP spokesperson, Colleen Boddez, who lives about a mile from the proposed plant site, said there are now about 200 CASP members “and it is growing”.

The planned plant design is for a 17,300 square feet building, just a little larger than the ice surface of a hockey rink, employing about 20 people, operating from 7 am to 3 pm five days a week, slaughtering 450 hogs each week to start, production rising to 800 weekly. Production waste is to be contained and trucked off-site daily. The plant is to be sanitized every 24 hours under the supervision of a licensed veterinarian under Canadian Food Inspection rules so the plant will be able to sell its product Canada-wide, and internationally.

The plant site is zoned agricultural but is under agriculure/industrial discretionary use and is about two to three metres above recognized flood levels and is not considered subject to flooding even in 1974, flood of the century, conditions. There will be no lagoons, a septic system for human waste is planned to keep that separate from industrial waste. There will be no outside holding pens, but stock will be held inside for four hours to rest after delivery as present regulations require. The plant is the planned business venture of two neighboring third generation farmers, Dan Perrott and Kory Majeau.

“This is a long term project,” said Majeau. “In agriculture there is no fast payoff. It is a long term thing.”

Majeau added the hog processing plant will be a value added venture, to better ride the cyclic economy of hog producing.

“That cycle is getting harder and harder to ride.”

The families of the two men have worked for months to get answers to questions on plant design, water protection, wastewater containment and treatment, and offal storage and its disposal.

The experts with those answers at the meeting included Stephen Hill, Sturgeon County’s planning officer; Tito Guglielmi, of Fergus, Ontario, an engineer involved in the designing of processing plants of agricultural products for 25 years; Rob George, an Alberta Environment hydrologist; Allan Lissey, the senior hydrologist for MLM Ground Water Engineering Ltd., Joe Wack, president of BCIP industrial products; and Casey Chan an Alberta Environment engineer.