Newest abattoir will be 100% organic - Fieldgate Organics aims to be Canada's first federally inspected 100 per cent organic plant

By Frances Anderson, Ontario Farmer Staff, December 5, 2006

Fieldgate Organics Inc. has found a permanent home for its meat slaughter and processing, and hopes to be making history by spring, with federal certification.
Ted Soudant, who is the president and CEO of Operations for the privately held company, hopes the move to the new plant will make his life easier.

Since a group of livestock farmers incorporated Fieldgate in May 2003, they've had their meat processing done at five separate locations.

"This should be the last one," says Soudant. "Some of the butcher shops weren't cutting to our specifications," he explained. Fieldgate outgrew others, or the abattoirs needed updates their owners weren't prepared to make.

"We looked at three different plants to purchase and realize that this is the biggest pill to take" - it's an investment in the millions - "but we know exactly where we stand and it was built to go to federal standards, which we're now in the process of doing."

The plant on the northern edge of Ingersoll is almost new. It was built by Laziz Meat Packers to take advantage of cheap beef following the BSE crisis, but it wasn't completed until February, 2006, by which time that market had "dried up, and we had a market that needed a plant," explains Soudant.

Laziz Meats continues to operate the retail shop in the building and Fieldgate is doing custom killing for Laziz' retail business.

Fieldgate is currently operating its kill floor just one day a week, processing about 20 head of beef, 20 pigs and 10 lambs in an eight hour shift. The receiving area has three pens, with different heights of water bowls, and several different gate configurations to accommodate different species.

"We're partially set up to kill and scald pork in a separate area of the 17,000 square foot plant, Soudant explains. Half the scald tank has been blocked off until capacity increases.

At full capacity Fieldgate could be killing 700 to 1000 hogs and 300 to 400 head of cattle a week, plus lamb.

Packing plants are shifting to cooling, cutting and "wet bagging" meat, essentially aging it in the box in its cryopac. This saves the space and associated cost of hanging a carcass in the cooler. It also saves the processor the four to six per cent shrinkage that occurs in the cooler.

Nevertheless, Fieldgate ages its beef 14 to 21 days, hung as a carcass.

"My opinion - and a number of our customers will confirm - there is a difference," said Soudant.

Fieldgate's meat products are also fully traceable - from birth to delivery in the box - by animal - whereas most plants track meat by lot, depending on the day and time of slaughter. Identity tracking is currently a manual process, but Soudant said the plant is experimenting with a new electronic scale that will link the animal and customer by computer.

Another feature of the plant is its electronic surveillance system, complete with electronic entry. The stored video has already been used to identify a delivery truck that accidentally damaged the building.

The plant uses fresh water from its own well, and stores the waste water in a reservoir before having it trucked away. Central By-Products Ltd. takes the slaughter waste.

"Once we get this plant to federal status, we will be able to max the plant out immediately," Soudant predicts. His goal is to achieve this by the spring of 2007.

Then, "to my knowledge, we'll be the only plant in Canada that will be 100 per cent organic."

At full capacity the labour force will have to grow from the current five full-time employees to 34.

Fieldgate is not a co-op; it is a private company formed by farmers who wanted control of their future and fair market prices for themselves. They contacted Soudant, who lives near Zurich, and had experience with marketing and distribution, to develop a startup plan; then hired him to implement it.

BSE broke during Fieldgate's startup year.

"It was a two-edged sword, for us," said Soudant. "On one side it brought organics into the limelight, but on the other side, conventional beef prices dropped. So we went from phase one, to phase two."

That meant establishing company retail outlets, in the London's Covent Garden Market and Windsor's Market Square. Three years later, Fieldgate has two refrigerated trucks and delivers to 14 other independent retailers, plus a couple of small retail chains: FarmBoy in Ottawa has nine stores and Hyland Farms in Toronto, has five.

"The growth," said Soudant, "is extreme."

About half the current meat producers are shareholders in the company. "another 25 farmers that sell to us are not shareholders. So, we're about 50 certified organic farmers.

New shareholders need to be certified organic or in the process in order to apply to the board. There are a limited number of shares available, Soudant said, and in order the keep its status as a private company, ownership in Fieldgate cannot exceed 49 shareholders.

"We're looking for more beef. We're looking for more pork and probably we're looking for more poultry," said Soudant. The trouble is, he's not sure how much more.

That's because a number of the current suppliers are expanding and there are another three or four farmers in transition to organics, who will be coming on line.

Trying to keep supply and demand balanced "absorbs a great deal of time," said Soudant. "One overrides the other. You can't get new sales until you've got the product and you can't get the product until you've got sales."


© Copyright 2006, Ontario Farmer. The Organic Agriculture Centre of Canada (OACC) wishes to thank Ontario Farmer for permission to reproduce this article on our website.


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