Great Lakes Specialty Meats in Mitchell, Ont. Halts Production

Jun 04, 2014

By Amanda Brodhagen, Farms.com

Great Lakes Specialty Meats of Canada, a company that had ties to Quality Meat Packing Ltd., the company that went bankrupted in May, is no longer processing hogs, Ontario Pork confirms.

Owners of the Toronto-based Quality Meats, the Schwartz family, also owned Great Lakes Specialty Meats in Mitchell, Ont.

“We have been informed that no hogs are being processed and Ontario Pork is working to ensure the smooth flow of marketing hogs in the province,” Mary Jane Quinn, communications and consumer marketing manager for Ontario Pork said in an emailed statement.

But unlike farmers who had shipped their hogs to the Toronto facility, producers were paid for all their hog shipments to Great Lakes. Ontario Pork’s marketing division announced last month that it would be offering partial compensation to farmers who never received payment for their hogs from Quality. However, the deal was only for pork producers who had shipped their pigs through Ontario Pork’s voluntary marketing division. Quality Meats owes $70-million to creditors, which includes about 70 pig farms in the province.

Prior to the news about the Mitchell plant ceasing operations, the plant processed approximately 5000 hogs per week.

“We don’t know all the details at this time or the impact this will have on the Ontario hog market,” she explained.

Video: Evolution of Beef Cattle Farming

The Clear Conversations podcast took to the road for a special episode recorded in Nashville during CattleCon, bringing listeners straight into the heart of the cattle industry. Host Tracy Sellers welcomed rancher Steve Wooten of Beatty Canyon Ranch in Colorado for a wide-ranging discussion that blended family history and sustainability, particularly as it relates to the future of beef production.

Sustainability emerged as a central theme of the conversation, a word that Wooten acknowledges can mean very different things depending on who you ask. For him, sustainability starts with the soil. Healthy soil produces healthy grass, which supports efficient cattle capable of producing year after year with minimal external inputs. It’s an approach that equally considers vegetation, animal efficiency, and long-term profitability.

That philosophy aligned naturally with Wooten’s involvement in the U.S. Roundtable for Sustainable Beef, where he served as a representative for the Colorado Cattlemen’s Association. The roundtable brings together the entire beef supply chain—from producers to retailers—along with universities, NGOs, and allied industries. Its goal is not regulation, Wooten emphasized, but collaboration, shared learning, and continuous improvement.