Perdue, Saskatchewan, slaughterhouse promises to keep beef’s value at home

Sunnydale Colony Farms promises the Saskatchewan beef, pork, bison and sheep industries better value for their animals with a slaughterhouse near Perdue, Sask.

Saskatchewan is home to 13,381 beef producers and their approximately 2.5 million head of cattle. However, only six per cent of Saskatchewan calves are finished and processed in the province.

“Is there not enough demand? Is that why we’re not producing more?” Ednali Fertuck-Zehavi, SDC Farms chief commercialization officer, said at the Saskatchewan Stock Growers Association’s semi-annual meeting near Saskatoon earlier this year.

“Because we know we have the land, we know we have the resources, we have the right people.”

The “fit-to-size”, flexible slaughterhouse will be federally inspected, offering distribution nationally and internationally, and will have the ability to process 200 hogs or sheep, 100 beef cattle or about 50 bison per day with different animals on different days. It is a smaller facility, but will have the ability to scale up as demand increases.

It’s currently under construction, expecting to employ 40 to 50 employees when it opens in summer.

Why it Matters: Value-add projects, such as slaughter facilities, increase local revenue and offer opportunity to industry.

Opportunity to sell to SDC Farms for processing is open to all operations, no matter their size.

“You don’t have to have 45 heads in order to start working with us. You can start working us with smaller quantities,” said Fertuck-Zehavi.

“And as you have come to us, we would work together. We would pay you fair price, and we will develop the market together, because there is constant demand.”

SDC Farms plans to have a particular focus on specialized cuts that distributors have more issues sourcing and that are important to foreign markets.

The demand for beef and the specialized cuts is expected to continue to increase in the Asian market over the next 20 years, while the gap of overall supply and demand grows in North America.

Saskatchewan sits on an “agriculture gold mine,” says Fertuck-Zehavi, with resources and commodities that are some of the highest value and quality.

According to a recent Global Institute for Food Security (GIFS) report, Saskatchewan has the lowest carbon footprint for beef production as per live weight and carcass weight. New Zealand, Australia, France and the United States are higher by 20 to 40 per cent.

GIFS had performed a carbon life cycle analysis of Western Canada’s crops, with the report being released last year. The most recent report on the beef carbon life cycle builds off the work of the Canadian Roundtable for Sustainable Beef.

“Carbon life cycle analysis is a standard that is in the industry, not just agriculture, but globally,” Steven Webb, GIFS’ fromer executive director and chief executive officer, said at SSGA’s semi-annual meeting earlier this year.

“It looks at the cost in the terms of the carbon that is required for all activities in an operation. It is written and driven by international standards.”

GIFS’ beef analysis is a a productivity metric rather than an emissions metric and considers all of production, including cow-calf, backgrounding, finishing and processing.

Saskatchewan and the rest of the Prairies have the advantage for beef production because of landscape and environment, which offers carbon capture when marginal land is put into livestock production and not broken. Cattle also introduce organic matter and bacteria to the soil, improving land when grazing is managed properly.

The environment also produces a distinctive effect on the cattle themselves, particularly when they’re finished in Saskatchewan temperatures ranging from -40 C to 40 C, which are unique stressors.

“The climate and that stress, together with a high-protein, high-value nutrition gets those beautiful marbles … those very, very beautiful, hard, fat, white marbles that no one else can compete with because no one else has our climatem” Fertuck-Zehavi said.

SDC Farms’ goal is to keep beef’s value at home, saying there is strong potential for this kind of growth and value-added agriculture in the province.

It estimates that by shipping animals out of Saskatchewan and finishing and processing them elsewhere, there is a 1.5 to three times value loss to the community and the province.

This number encompasses the economic loss of employees, revenue and taxes that are not kept within Saskatchewan.

“Local communities in rural areas are shrinking because we’re sending all our good cows,” she added.

“And not just the cows. Everything that we’re actually producing in this province, we’re sending it to be finished somewhere else, where they are taking all the big margins.”

The company intends for the Eagle Creek area to be a centre of value-added agriculture, with its slaughterhouse and pea protein plant being only one piece.

Fertuck-Zehavi said SDC Farms is focused on showing “practical possibilities” in reviving rural life and communities.