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The Abattoir Society’s second Annual General Meeting will be held at 7 pm on Thursday April 24 at the Farmers Institute. All abattoir clients and supporters of local food processing are invited to become members of the Society and come to the meeting. The annual fee of $25 can be paid by Paypal (no need to have your own account) if you go to the website’s Support Us page. Cheques are also accepted. 

Saturday April 26 is Open House at the abattoir, 1447B Fulford Ganges Rd. It is not a working day, so you can see the animal pens and walk all the way through the slaughter trailer, the coolers and meat cutting area and ask all the questions you want. Tour guides will be the Abattoir Society directors.

The change from federal to provincial employees to inspect meat at BC’s abattoirs has been taking place over the last few months. For us the official change over is on January 1^st. We have said goodbye to the federal team who were incredibly helpful and patient as we were learning. In February we will start working with the new provincial team. They are all newly hired and trained, and may have slightly different methods compared with their predecessors, even though their purpose, safe food, is exactly the same. We are therefore scheduling smaller numbers of animals for the first few slaughter days until we see how things work. 

At present abattoirs do not have to pay for inspection services. It comes out of our tax dollars.

After much practice at basic poultry slaughter we can now offer a few “frills”, such as chickens or turkeys halved, or chickens cut into parts. Our skill atMuscovy ducks is growing, and duck slaughter is now a listed service.

We need to have a full day’s work if we are to cover costs, so have sometimes put out a call for roosters to make up the numbers. Recently we have had requests to slaughter and compost spent hens. This could also be done on days of low workload.

Our scales can print more than just the weight of each bird on the label. If you want your farm name or the price added please request that at the time of booking.

Lamb customers have sometimes asked for the head to be left on, the caul fat saved or one of the stomachs to be kept. All are possible with a little extra time and effort. Lamb fat has been saved for soapmaking and hides picked up for tanning.

Our first beef animal, a small steer was slaughtered on November 20^th, a learning experience for all involved. Some modifications are needed before we book beef regularly. This is now being planned, and will be announced here. Early February would be the first possible date.

Season’s greetings and a very happy new year to all our customers, volunteers and many other supporters. We have continued to have a great response to every request for materials, equipment and labour from local farmers and consumers who want to boost Salt Spring’s food production in a sustainable way. 

The winterizing of the crawl space under the cut and wrap building has been done entirely with volunteer labour and a variety of donated materials. Our composting of Special Risk Materials from beef animals is done on site in donated compost bins. The composting of the poultry and lamb offal takes place on a local farm where, after in vessel composting, it nourishes field and greenhouse crops. The edible offal, chicken and turkey necks, livers and hearts, and sometimes lamb livers, tongues, hearts and kidneys are saved and sold, sometimes also with lamb bones for pet food.

 Thank you to everyone who has helped us to complete our first year of service to the Salt Spring community.

WEBMASTER’S APOLOGY – the webmaster has been dealing with an urgent family matter and apologies for the late posting of news items.

The abattoir’s last slaughter day for lambs  is December 27^th.  After this meat has been cut, wrapped and frozen the abattoir will close for the rest of January for further floor repairs. If the work is completed on schedule we will reopen on the first Wednesday of February.  Bookings may be submitted as usual, but dates cannot be confirmed until the last week of January. 

No poultry dates will be set until there is a large batch needing slaughter, probably in late March. We anticipate one other poultry date before Easter. Please watch the website booking calendar for dates, and put in your requests as early as you can.

Not all customers want or need their meat boned, so we have changed the standard cut to make boning a requested service, not a routine one. This can still be done, but there will be a $10 change for boning and rolling a leg or shoulder.

Grinding also has not always been needed so that too will be taken out of the standard cut and done only on request for a small surcharge.

To see the revised Standard Salt Sprng Lamb Cut please CLICK HERE.