Re: Quinn’s Meats

Jul 10, 2024

Local meat producers are struggling with a lack of abattoir services, but reopening the Joyceville prison abattoir is not the solution. I wish to clarify why.

As noted in your article, the Wallace Beef operation closed down in September of 2022. This occurred after I published Bloody Bad Business: Report on the Joyceville Institution Abattoir, exposing decades of serious violations. However, those violations were not, as your article described, “over 25 years old,” and the “number of specific incidents” was not “relatively low.” Anyone who reads the report, which displays the Access to Information documents, will see that the violations were many, and recent.

In 2021, a Joyceville inmate told me that they were spraying blood from the abattoir on the fields around the prison, which I was able to confirm. Records show that blood was also being dumped into the prison’s wastewater treatment plant, damaging infrastructure and putting the health and safety of prisoners and correctional staff at risk. Correctional protocols were being violated to place prisoners with violent histories in the abattoir, and psychological and medical staff were refusing to conduct the required assessments “due to liability concerns.” And contraband drug trafficking was a chronic, longstanding and recent problem compromising the security of the institution and public safety at large.

Your article states that the abattoir is located in the federal riding of MP Mark Gerretsen (Kingston and the Islands). This is not true, at least not until the next election. Currently, it is located in the riding of MP Scott Reid (Lanark-Frontenac-Kingston), although Gerretsen arranged for the electoral map to be redrawn so that Joyceville will be absorbed into his riding as of the next federal election. Until then, Gerretsen is overstepping his political boundaries as a lobbyist for reopening the Joyceville prison abattoir.

Like Gerretsen, I recently visited the abattoir. The pictures I took should be argument enough against the facility ever reopening and producing food for human consumption again. The building, constructed in 1958, was in almost constant production for over six decades, and was ill-maintained throughout that time. Correctional staff informed me that the mould problem alone is so severe that they have to keep fans on at all times otherwise the mould quickly takes over.

I have over 1000 pages of documents from Access to Information, including recent records showing how much it will cost taxpayers to repair the building. In fact, repairs are already underway, and we the public are paying for them. In 2023, CSC had spent $435,000 on repairs, with $500,000 forecasted for repairs in 2024. The cost of keeping the abattoir “in a state of good repair” over the next two years is $678,401, “strictly for building maintenance.” A Building Condition Report identified the need for $1,235,070 in additional repairs in the short term (1-5 years) and a further $1,167,099 in long-term repairs (5-30 years). On top of this, repairs to the connected beef stock barn and paddock would be needed, at a cost of $1,131,506 in the short term and $237,462 in the long term.

Adding up these numbers, we are looking at a cost to taxpayers of roughly $5,384,538, more or less, to reopen the Joyceville abattoir so that consumers can once again be sold meat that was butchered in a prison by incarcerated men being paid $3 per hour or less.

This, by the way, is a violation of human rights under standards set by the United Nations International Labour Organization (the commercial use of underpaid prison labour). It is also an option that is not supported by the Correctional Service of Canada. Recent records show that “CORCAN has confirmed that they do not need the abattoir to provide vocational training to inmates” and CSC’s Chief Financial Officer Tony Matson wrote that “We do not support the leasing of the abattoir” as it goes against policy “and is not appropriate stewardship of government resources.”

Should the operation be entirely privatized and not use prison labour at all, the questions become: why is a private company being publicly subsidized, why is a private company operating on prison grounds, and why does the Correctional Service of Canada have to bear the burden of ensuring that security is maintained?

MP Gerretsen and fellow abattoir advocates like Dave Perry (who is a CSC employee and therefore should not be lobbying to influence correctional policy decisions to favour his economic interests) appear willing to overstep ethical, legal, and political boundaries to resurrect this facility. Farmers may be scrambling, but reopening the Joyceville abattoir will not solve the problem. It will likely be challenged by the institution and by unions, and it will be scrutinized by academics, researchers, and media. Legal challenges may also arise over the violation of human rights, the violation of correctional and federal policies, and/or the sale of unlabelled prison-produced food to consumers. In every sense, this is not a sustainable solution for farmers seeking security in local food processing.

If the meat industry has a problem, it is not the prison’s problem to solve. For $5 million, a new abattoir could be built off prison grounds as a long-term solution. But let the meat industry pay for it, not taxpayers.

Calvin Neufeld