ALLOCATION OF MEAT INSPECTION RESOURCES IN ONTARIO

Following considerable conflict, the first phase of this project produced an agreement at the end of April, 1997 between the Ontario Ministry of Agriculture and Food and the Ontario Independent Meat Packers and Processors (OIMPP) that an alternative system for allocating inspection hours to plants was to be developed. The alternative was to be based on the principle that scarce hours should be allocated in a way that does not penalize plants which use inspection resources efficiently. A second principle was that the process should explicitly recognize that there are efficiencies associated with plant size and that efficient small plants should not be discriminated against. This document contains the final recommendations for that process. In describing the process, the report addresses separately the issues of : 1. How to allocate hours to plants at their current (1996/97) plant size. 2. How to allocate hours to plants that are growing or are new 3. How to address any appeals from this set of recommendations and 4. What to do about charging for inspection hours used above the allocation levels. In addition to these short term issues, the original project made recommendations about the longer term issues regarding the direction of meat inspection for the next several years. This is summarized here and recommendations are made for a process to move along a positive adjustment path.