Beefing up food security in Quebec's Eastern Townships by reducing meat waste

When Jacinthe Lévesque helped create the Viande Solidaire project in 2020, it was a small solution to what seemed like a local problem.

Farmers in the area around the town of Coaticook, Que., were seeing meat from certain animals go to waste because Quebec's strict animal protection laws made it too hard to get them to market.

At the same time, the local food programs were short on sources of affordable fresh meat.

As the co-owner of Abbatoir Régionale de Coaticook, a certified and inspected slaughterhouse, Lévesque saw a practical way to solve both problems.

"The animals only have to travel a short distance to get to our slaughterhouse," she said.

The project made so much sense that it has now been handed over to food security non-profit Moisson Estrie to be expanded across the Eastern Townships.

"We expect that this project could be used all around Quebec," said Christian Bibeau, the executive director of Moisson Estrie, explaining that he is already in conversation with organizations in other regions to share the idea.

LISTEN | How the program works: 

Quebec AM11:44Townships groups offer meat for solidarity

Viande Solidaire is a program developed in 2020 to help divert meat that would otherwise be wasted to food security programs in the Coaticook region. The program is now being expanded to cover a larger region. Eastern Townships reporter Gordon Lambie explains how the program works, where the idea came from, and what is involved in the expansion.

The concept behind the project revolves around farmers' relationship with the province's Animal Welfare and Safety Act.

The law prevents anyone from loading an animal onto a vehicle for transport if doing so might cause them to suffer as a result of "infirmity, illness, injury or fatigue," the act reads

Similarly, no animal is allowed to be unloaded at auction if it appears to be suffering.

This combination of restrictions makes farmers very cautious about what animals they send outside of the region for commercial slaughter, according to Christian Kaiser.

Kaiser is a dairy farmer in the Coaticook area and the vice-resident of the union of agricultural producers in the Eastern Townships.

"Producers don't want to take a chance anymore," he said. "You can get fines if you can find an animal on the truck that's not supposed to be transported."

Although there is some flexibility for farmers to have an animal butchered for their own families, that quickly results in more meat than one family would need.

"The meat is still perfectly good," noted Marjorie Tyroler, the director of the Centre d'Action Bénévole in Coaticook.

She said that the presence of the local slaughterhouse is what made the whole idea of Viande Solidaire possible. Because animals no longer need to be transported long distances, there is less concern about them suffering harm along the way.

The result is that animals whose carcasses would otherwise have been wasted have been used to help feed people in need.

For Bibeau at Moisson Estrie, expanding the program is a way to help divert this waste on a larger scale while also building new partnerships with farmers across the Townships.

"It's a great opportunity to make a collaboration and to find new partners all around us," he said, explaining that only 17 farmers have taken part in the Viande Solidaire program so far.

Provided that organizations can find new regional slaughterhouses to partner with, that leaves a lot of potential for new sources of food for programs facing an ever-growing need.