AlaskaDenise
In Memoriam
(BF regulations' impact on small famers is not limited to developing countries.)
By NEIL HORNERNews Reporter
Sep 21 2007
Wayne Osborne is taking a stand for smallhold farmers.
The owner of Omega Blue Farm says he?s going to continue to sell his free range poultry to area residents, despite new food inspection regulations which, he said, would make that impossible if he followed them.
?I?m not bluffing,? he said. ?I did the legal research. I mean it.?
Osborne, along with wife Jenny, raises free-range chickens and turkeys at their Spider Lake-area farm. The seeds of his resistance were sown about a year ago after he attended a bio-security conference in the Fraser Valley dealing with avian flu and its fallout.
?They kept giving me the industrial rhetoric of what they were doing and why they were doing it and I kept on standing up and saying, yeah, but with smallholders, that wouldn?t work,? he said. ?When it was over, a lot of them pulled me aside and said they agree with everything I said, but when they draft regulations, there?s nobody representing the smallholder at the table. You have to get organized.?
That?s exactly what he did. He formed a group, Feathers Canada, to represent the interests of smallhold farmers in the country.
?It doesn?t matter if you?re a pet owner, raise poultry for food, as a collector, for show or for preservation, we are all part of the same community,? he said. ?We need to be represented when regulators are drawing up the regulations.?
Osborne took his next step last week, when he sent a letter to agriculture minister Pat Bell, calling the new meat inspection regulations unsustainable and illegal.
?Applying B.C.?s meat regulations to the smallholder is illegal,? he said in his letter. ?Forcing smallholders to comply with them is not defensible in a Canadian court of law. Feathers Canada intends to furthe r develop a legal defence to the meat regulations and make this defence available to any and all individuals negatively impacted by these laws or any attempts to enforce them.
Osborne said the regulations requiring a special processing plant on the property, and to call in government inspectors to oversee the slaughter, makes farm gate sales of poultry impossible.
?For me to set up a processing plant on this property to satisfy the regulations would cost $150,000. What do I sell in a year? $4,500 worth of poultry? No person in their right mind would put out that kind of outlay for such a small revenue exchange.?
He said Canada has an obligation under the Constitution and United Nations agreements to preserve the genetic diversity of farm stock, and with that, he added, comes the requirement to protect the traditional lifestyles that support this diversity.
Osborne said he doesn?t plan to stop selling his free-range poultry to friends and neighbours, a move which could, he said, spark the court challenge he seeks.
?On-site processing and farm gate sales is protected by the Constitution and international treaties,? he said. ?I am taking a stand here and every person in this province should take the same stand.?
http://www.pqbnews.com/portals-code/list.cgi?paper=50&cat=42&id=1069364&more=0
By NEIL HORNERNews Reporter
Sep 21 2007
Wayne Osborne is taking a stand for smallhold farmers.
The owner of Omega Blue Farm says he?s going to continue to sell his free range poultry to area residents, despite new food inspection regulations which, he said, would make that impossible if he followed them.
?I?m not bluffing,? he said. ?I did the legal research. I mean it.?
Osborne, along with wife Jenny, raises free-range chickens and turkeys at their Spider Lake-area farm. The seeds of his resistance were sown about a year ago after he attended a bio-security conference in the Fraser Valley dealing with avian flu and its fallout.
?They kept giving me the industrial rhetoric of what they were doing and why they were doing it and I kept on standing up and saying, yeah, but with smallholders, that wouldn?t work,? he said. ?When it was over, a lot of them pulled me aside and said they agree with everything I said, but when they draft regulations, there?s nobody representing the smallholder at the table. You have to get organized.?
That?s exactly what he did. He formed a group, Feathers Canada, to represent the interests of smallhold farmers in the country.
?It doesn?t matter if you?re a pet owner, raise poultry for food, as a collector, for show or for preservation, we are all part of the same community,? he said. ?We need to be represented when regulators are drawing up the regulations.?
Osborne took his next step last week, when he sent a letter to agriculture minister Pat Bell, calling the new meat inspection regulations unsustainable and illegal.
?Applying B.C.?s meat regulations to the smallholder is illegal,? he said in his letter. ?Forcing smallholders to comply with them is not defensible in a Canadian court of law. Feathers Canada intends to furthe r develop a legal defence to the meat regulations and make this defence available to any and all individuals negatively impacted by these laws or any attempts to enforce them.
Osborne said the regulations requiring a special processing plant on the property, and to call in government inspectors to oversee the slaughter, makes farm gate sales of poultry impossible.
?For me to set up a processing plant on this property to satisfy the regulations would cost $150,000. What do I sell in a year? $4,500 worth of poultry? No person in their right mind would put out that kind of outlay for such a small revenue exchange.?
He said Canada has an obligation under the Constitution and United Nations agreements to preserve the genetic diversity of farm stock, and with that, he added, comes the requirement to protect the traditional lifestyles that support this diversity.
Osborne said he doesn?t plan to stop selling his free-range poultry to friends and neighbours, a move which could, he said, spark the court challenge he seeks.
?On-site processing and farm gate sales is protected by the Constitution and international treaties,? he said. ?I am taking a stand here and every person in this province should take the same stand.?
http://www.pqbnews.com/portals-code/list.cgi?paper=50&cat=42&id=1069364&more=0