Friday, August 29, 2014

Cull cow plant may come in Upper New York


Dairy farmers in Eastern Ontario and Quebec may get a new opportunity to sell cull cows to a packing plant, this time in Upper New York State.

The Common Council of Rome, N.Y., which is almost directly south of Kingston and the Thousand Islands border crossing, has approved amendments to the city’s zoning code that would open the door to a meat processing plant in certain industrial zones, the Utica Observer-Dispatch reported.

The changes come five months after the city’s zoning board shot down a local developer’s plan to locate a plant in a vacant manufacturing site.

Rome’s director of community and economic development says the city would like to support the local agricultural community with a processing plant for dairy cull cows and needed to get rules governing such a development on its books.

The former Levinoff-Colbex plant near Montreal has failed as has the Kitchener plant started by Gencor, an artificial insemination business.
Cargill’s Better Beef Ltd. plant at Guelph began taking cull cows, playing a part in the failure of the Gencor plant.

The main reason for the failures has been stiff competition from plants in the United States.