A crack lets the light in, the song goes, and one has just appeared in the corporate walls of Canada’s top food retailers.[rssbreak]
Sobeys – a chain that flies the banner “The Hometown Advantage” – now confronts nine former franchisees from Ontario farm country who have mutinied to form their own Hometown Grocers Co-op.
Corporate policies prevented the stores from buying locally, and only allowed them to purchase federally inspected meat products, which come chiefly from three companies (Maple Leaf, Cargill and Tyson).
So the stores joined forces, setting up their own co-op to buy locally raised and grown products.
In an industry where behemoths typically foster an image of themselves as plain, decent, hardworking country folk, the new mini-chain is the real thing.
The main mover behind the new co-op is Dale Kropf, who last year partnered his six stores in south-central Ontario with Local Food Plus, which promotes local and sustainable foods.
Most livestock farmers are reeling from a billion-dollar loss in meat exports as a result of new U.S. pro-local measures called COOL (country of origin labelling). The nine Hometown Grocers stores plan to stock their fridges with local meat.
At heart, this is a contest between big and local/small.
But to understand what’s really going on here, you need to be aware of the drama playing out between two competing meat inspection systems in this country, one federal and the other provincial. (See sidebar.)
In a globalized food system, food travels many miles on many roads. But traffic on all roads leading to Sobeys, Loblaws, Metros and Walmarts is regulated by the agriculture departments of central and regional governments, which started treating farming as agribusiness back in the 1950s.
Once politicians and bureaucrats declared farming an industry like any other, they told farmers to “get big or get out,” just like in successful industries of the day like auto, steel and nuclear power generation.
North American federal and regional governments have been resistant to policy changes that give local farmers an even break with local stores.
Don’t be fooled by the “Buy local” ads put out by many governments. Check what they do, not what they say – which is to put the onus on customers, not the system, to buy local.
The federal government inspects meat to give it a stamp of approval recognized by other countries. Canadian supermarkets and most restaurants now demand the same stamp of approval that exports get.
To encourage big-is-better, the feds from the 90s on limited their inspection of slaughterhouses to the biggest and most centralized ones, and these in turn preferred dealing with the smallest number of farmers who could deliver the biggest orders.
Canada’s food sector is among the most centralized in the world. By the latest official count, in 2005, four retailers control 78 per cent of sales.
Farms that were too small or too distant from the centralized slaughterhouses relied on local slaughterhouses inspected by the province. Ontario’s standards are, by all accounts, as good as any. Yet no government officials challenge the chains that refuse to accept the Ontario label.
If chains and restaurants can’t get meat with the Canadian government stamp of approval, they buy U.S. or New Zealand meat, because Canada’s federal inspectors automatically recognize those national standards as their equal, a favour they won’t extend to their own provinces.
But hugeness doesn’t fit the bill when it comes to today’s megatrends.
As figures in StatsCan’s recent report, Fork In The Road, reveal, meat and other goods participate in a game of musical chairs whereby areas import the same goods they export.
There’s effectively no U.S. border when it comes to meat Canada both exports and imports it. This practice, called “redundant food miles,” leads to needless global warming.
But from a food security and systems resilience standpoint, it’s irresponsible to discourage small, diverse farms spread across the landscape, able to respond locally.
As well, big is bad ethics. The long trip to slaughterhouses is fraught with animal mistreatment, as is feedlot organization, which disregards basic animal instincts such as herding.
And low standards for mostly immigrant workers in giant slaughter factories, brought to movie theatre audiences in Food, Inc., are just waiting for a boycott.
No-name and no-place meat is not what customers want. They want local and some of the sustainable things that go with it.
Wayne Roberts’s partner, Lori Stahlbrand, is the president of Local Food Plus.
news@nowtoronto.com
