Home butchering crackdown in Ontario

Live in the North Country long enough (as a meat-eater) and you’re likely to go in on a side of beef or split a lamb from a local farmer.

The farmer raises the animal and has it butchered at a state-licensed “custom” slaughterhouse (these are a rung down from the USDA-certified slaughterhouse that’s required to sell meat retail).  The farmer then sells a quarter or a half or a whole of the animal to a willing buyer.  That’s the informal freezer trade.

The Ontario government is cracking down on a man who sidestepped that “custom slaughterhouse” part of the equation.  Mark Tijssen butchered his own pig and shared the meat with a friend.  According to the CBC:

Under provincial law, people can slaughter an animal and consume the meat for personal use, but it is an offence to share that meat with others without being licensed.
Tijssen, who is representing himself in court, said the right to security of the person is protected in the charter and argued that buying commercially inspected meat can put his family at risk.

“At the heart of the case is food choice,” said Tijssen, a major in the Canadian Forces who said his family has been slaughtering their own meat for generations, “our right to choose what we consume and to control what we consume.

This issue runs along the lines of the raw milk wars.  People assert the right to raise and grow and consume their own food.  The fault line is when they cross that next step – sharing that food with other willing, consenting adults.

At what point does that sharing become a public issue and therefore a food safety concern that’s subject to regulation?

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7 Comments on “Home butchering crackdown in Ontario”

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  1. aed939 says:

    Sharing home-butchered meat can be legal. The way to do it is for all who receive meat be co-owner of the live animal. The intent of the law is to prevent producers from home-slaughtering, and then sell cuts of meat from home post-slaughter. I don’t know what is the case for Tijssen.

  2. Paul says:

    So is it “illegal” in Ontario for you to butcher a deer and share the meat with your hunting partners? This seems ridiculous.

  3. Paul says:

    I assume it also “illegal” to share the vegetables from your garden (that might contain some bacterial contamination) with the neighbors.

  4. dave says:

    Sounds like another example of policy creep… something we see all too often here in the Adirondacks.

    The intent of the law is sound. It is to prevent the distribution of potentially unsafe and unregulated food.

    We would like to think that this can be done with flexible laws that allow for things like occasionally sharing meet with a friend – some people like to invoke “common sense” when describing these laws. But the fact is that rules and laws that are crafted like that are almost always exploited by people looking to bend the rules… thus, we end up stricter laws that have little room for interpretation.

  5. Pete Klein says:

    We are almost there so let’s just make everything illegal.

  6. Bret4207 says:

    That would never happen here. Oh…..wait…..S510, which contains language that could actually outlaw home gardening goes for a vote this evening in our Senate!

    Huh. I guess it could happen here after all.

  7. Notinthevillage says:

    But the fact is that rules and laws that are crafted like that are almost always exploited by people looking to bend the rules… thus, we end up stricter laws that have little room for interpretation.

    Government bureaucrats have no incentive to use common sense to break the rules. You can’t get fired for following the rules no matter how dumb those rules may be. On the other hand, breaking the rules can get you fired. Case in point, the Dutch skimmers during the gulf oil spill.

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