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By Aaron Schulze

Merritt Recovery

Province funding nearly $3 million to Nicola Valley meat processing, Gateway 286 and City of Merritt

May 13, 2022 | 9:57 AM

MERRITT, B.C. — The B.C. government has given three separate grants to support economic development in the Nicola Valley and recovery efforts in Merritt following the November 2021 floods.

In a news release issued Friday (May 13) morning, the province announced it will provide a $1 million grant to the Small-Scale Meat Producers Association to build a community abattoir in the Merritt area. It will provide meat processing and cut-and-wrap services to local farmers and ranchers.

“With the recent changes to B.C.’s meat-licensing system and investments in facilities like the Nicola Valley community abattoir, this revitalization of the small-scale meat industry makes it easier to produce, buy and sell B.C. meat in our rural communities, and helps strengthen our food security and food resiliency,” said Lana Popham, Minister of Agriculture and Food.

The abattoir will be a government-inspected licensed facility with a full range of services to process red meat. The province says the facility will provide new opportunities for meat processing and enables local farmers and ranchers to grow their businesses and create greater opportunities to maximize profit.

“My partner and I moved to the Nicola Valley in 2016 planning to expand our business to meet the growing demand for well-raised, local meat. But we soon found that the processors we relied upon were not able to keep up with our production and we had to scale the business back instead of growing it,” Julia Smith, a Merritt pork and beef producer and the Small-Scale Meat Producers Association’s executive director says. “We were on the verge of giving up. But now we are ready to press on, because this facility will allow us, and other local family farms and ranches, to grow and thrive while providing greater food security for the community.”

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Elsewhere, the Province is also providing a $1 million grant to the Scw’exmx Tribal Council toward Gateway 286 in Merritt. The funding will go toward fire protection infrastructure to further the project’s progress.

Additionally, the City of Merritt is receiving a $500,000 grant to complete economic development projects and initiatives to support long-term economic recovery. The province says this is in addition to $329,000 in provincial funding for the City of Merritt to update flood-hazard mapping and develop new flood-mitigation plans.