Small-scale operation will have 1,700 square feet of space
By Diego Flammini
Assistant Editor, North American Content
Farms.com
Cattle farmers near Invermere, British Columbia will soon have somewhere to take their cattle for processing as a small-scale abattoir is scheduled to open in January 2017.
Windermere District Farmers' Institute (WDFI) will own the abattoir. It is located just south of the Invermere Crossroads on the West Side of Highway 93/95. It'll have about 1,700 square feet of space and be capable of handling up to 22 head of cattle per week.
The numbers are small, but so is the number of farmers WDFI is catering to.
“It’s for small acreage owners (and) ranchers who want to have better marketing options that they don’t have right now,” WDFI’s secretary Peter Trescher told CBC Radio One’s Radio West. “The nearest abattoir now is about two to three and a half hours away.”
Interview with Peter Trescher runs from 21:30 to 27:00
Trescher also said local hunters would have access to the facility.
It’s taken the non-profit farming group more than a decade to see its vision of a local abattoir come to fruition.
“In 2004 the new meat regulations came in where animals had to be processed in an inspected setting,” Trescher said. “We did a feasibility study on it and decided some of our challenges would be zoning, funding and finding an operator.”
According to WDFI’s website, Grant Kelly, owner of Grant’s Foods of Invermere, will operate the facility once it’s finished.
WDFI is hosting an open house on Jan. 4, 2017 to give the public its first look at the new abattoir.