Private poultry processor in Alberta shuts down
Small scale poultry producers in Alberta will be forced to reconsider their chicken-growing plans this year after one of the last privately-owned provincially inspected poultry processors closed its doors.
Pigeon Lake Poultry Processors is no longer slaughtering and processing chickens and turkeys and is selling its equipment, said owner Brett Kikel, of Westerose, Alta.
“I am shutting the business down. I have had enough.”
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In previous years, Kikel slaughtered and processed 60,000 to 70,000 chickens and 4,000 to 5,000 turkeys each year for producers who would in turn sell them at farmers’ markets or direct to customers. In Alberta, animals for sale must be provincially or federally inspected.
After seven years as owner of the facility, Kikel said the combination of finding staff, government regulations and a fight with the provincial government over composting rules has forced him out of business.
“I just can’t continue with the government rules.”
Changes to the province’s mobile slaughter licenses now allow mobile slaughter butchers to travel to farms and slaughter animals on farm without the same rigorous inspection services. The meat from on-farm slaughter can not be sold, but it does provide an option for producers who want to raise meat on their farm for their own consumption without having a provincial inspector monitor the process and the health of the birds.
Kikel said an ongoing legal battle with the province over how he composts the offal from the birds helped solidify his decision to no longer process birds. He will continue to process beef.
For producers like Mandy Melnyk of Meadow Creek Farms in Waskatenau, the closing of Pigeon Lake Processors was a huge financial blow and logistical blow to her farming operation.
“Now all of my processing costs are going to have to be upfront, which is very prohibitive for me,” she said.
Melnyk is asking her customers for an up front $400 deposit at the start of the season for those wanting 10 whole or cut birds.
“In the 2025 growing season, without deposits it will be very difficult to produce chicken this year,” she wrote to her customers.
In the past, Pigeon Lake Poultry Processors would pick up the birds from her northern Alberta farm, process the birds, cut them into pieces and deliver them back to her farm for sale. After searching, a local Hutterite colony has agreed to process the birds, but it is up to Melnyk to deliver the birds to the colony and then hire a refrigerated truck to drive the killed birds to Edmonton to a plant where they can be cut into pieces, the most popular way poultry is sold and eaten.
“For people who want to raise outdoor birds and sell them they now have a lot more hurdles to go through.”
“I want to say I’m grateful beyond grateful that the colony said yes because what would have happened to me if they had said no? Where would I have gone?”
While the Alberta government has no statistics on poultry raised on farms and sold through farmers’ markets, it is a popular way consumers can buy farm-raised chickens and turkeys.
“This just gives more power to industrial production and continues to be another nail in the coffin for small scale production and local farming. There are no private processing facilities for the public to be able to access for chicken processing,” said Melnyk.
Kikel said he is in the process of notifying his customers he is winding down his poultry operation.
Source: www.producer.com