Food Safety - Meeting Customer Needs and Government Regulations on TK Ranch

Meeting the food safety needs of our customers as well as those set out by the Canadian Food Inspection Agency are very important to us. After speaking to thousands of people about their food safety concerns we created our stringent protocols. These include:

• No antibiotics, not even therapeutic, are allowed in slaughter animals. Any animals that get sick and require treatment are diverted out of the program into the conventional market;
• No artificial growth hormones or promotants are allowed;
• The feeding of animal by-products is not allowed;
• The use of ionophores (for treating acidosis in the rumen) is not allowed;
• The use of chemical parasiticides and/or insecticides is not allowed;
• Only unsprayed and or certified organic feed is allowed. Animals must also graze on unsprayed and certified organic pastures;
• The feeding of genetically modified organisms is not allowed;
• All animals must be slaughtered and processed in small government inspected facilities,and;
• All processed meats must be made without the use of MSG, gluten, milk products, nitrites, nitrates or other chemicals.

Every time you go out for dinner or shop in your local grocery store think about the long term sustainability of your buying choices. The only way that change will happen in the food industry is for consumers to vote with their dollars.

Food safety is a growing concern for many consumers. All we have to do is turn on the television or radio to hear about problems with the food system. Many of these problems have been created by the centralization of almost everything we consume into the hands of only a few large multi-national corporations.

One very clear example of this is the meat industry in Alberta. Few consumers realize that there are only two companies that ranchers can sell their animals to - Tyson and Cargill. Both the Tyson plant in Brooks and the Cargill plant in High River kill over 4,000 animals each per day - that's one animal every 20 seconds. Line speed - how quickly an animal can be killed and processed - is the primary goal of these plants. It's not difficult to understand how food safety problems arise from this system - it is not only in-humane for the animals but also for the people that are expected to work in these conditions. Eric Schlosser's bestselling book Fast Food Nation: The Dark Side of the All American Meal discusses in detail the problems that are created in the food system by these large multi-nationals. The factory farming system they have created to support growing consumer dependence on fast and over-processed foods is almost solely responsible for the loss of small family farms globally. Almost all of the meat that is consumed in Alberta has been processed by these two plants.