Can you slaughter your own sheep

Skip to content Ontario. To help ensure a safe meat supply for consumers and to reduce the potential for food-borne illnesses, all meat offered for sale or distributed in Ontario must be inspected.

The sale or distribution of uninspected meat is illegal. The following information is provided for your protection, to help you understand your responsibilities and legal obligations as a producer or dealer of meat intended for sale or distribution.

Its purpose is to help ensure that meat processed for consumption in Ontario meets food safety requirements. The regulation sets out requirements to ensure that animals are fit for slaughter, handled humanely and processed under sanitary conditions.

All species of mammals and birds, raised in captivity and whose meat is intended for human consumption, are included in the regulation. Under the regulation, all meat destined for sale or distribution, without exception, must originate from livestock or poultry slaughtered in provincially licensed or federally registered establishments, or imported from a federally recognized source.

In Ontario, no one can sell, transport, deliver or distribute meat unless:. If you intend to sell or distribute meat for human consumption, you have the legal obligation to ensure that your animals are slaughtered in a provincially licensed slaughter plant or federally registered establishment websites are provided below to help you find a slaughter plant in your area.

It is illegal to transport, deliver, sell or distribute uninspected meat anywhere in Ontario. All geographical areas of Ontario are covered in this requirement, without exception. It is illegal to transport uninspected meat for any reason, including further processing, cutting and wrapping, distribution or sale. Through the application of the meat inspection program, OMAFRA 's Food Inspection Branch ensures that provincially licensed slaughter plants comply with legislated standards for the production of safe meat products.

Skilled and knowledgeable meat inspectors, with veterinary support, are present in each slaughter plant, each day of slaughter, to inspect all animals and poultry intended for slaughter. Medium and large freestanding meat processing plants meat plants that do not conduct slaughter activities are usually inspected at a minimum once a month.

The meat inspection program monitors animal health, meat safety, the treatment of animals, proper handling of meat products, sanitation programs and water safety at Ontario's licensed plants. In addition, each plant is audited annually by expert auditors contracted by the ministry to ensure that they meet minimum requirements for provincial licensing.

All meat intended for sale or distribution in Ontario is subjected to full inspection before and after slaughter, whether in provincial slaughter plants or federally registered establishments, and both inspection programs receive full veterinary, laboratory and enforcement support. The difference between federal and provincial inspection levels is one of scale and scope.

While provincially licensed slaughter plants serve local livestock producers and can sell only within Ontario borders, currently only federally inspected establishments can sell across Canada and anywhere else in the world.

Federally inspected plants tend to be much larger than provincially inspected plants. The Meat Regulation allows for the emergency slaughter of food animals outside of a slaughter plant in certain circumstances. A regional veterinarian can only approve emergency slaughter where it is necessary because an animal has escaped confinement, is injured and cannot be transported without undue suffering or distress, or cannot be transported without endangering the animal or persons.

Years ago when we first started farming, I heard a Seattle chef on NPR talk about how cooking with a meat you have reared and killed is a different kind of cooking. I understand that completely. It is a feeling of pride, reverence, gratitude and, yes, joy.

A celebration, a glass of wine raised to the animal and to nature and the land for feeding that animal so we can now eat. She demanded I post photos of the slaughtered lamb. I am not PETA. Posting such photos would do neither meat-eater nor vegan any good. It would not help a person come to an educated understanding of what harvesting an animal is really like. It is the process of understanding life and death within the hierarchy of nature that allowed me to look.

This same reader said she prayed that some day a pig would eat me. Why waste my meat? The worms or someone will get me sooner or later. Death is not necessarily a bad thing. This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed. No animal wants to make that sacrifice for humans.

They want to enjoy the sunshine, play with their friends, and love their families. Humans force animals to make the ultimate sacrifice for themselves.

Your respect and thoughtfulness touched me deeply. I will share a bit of my story. I was born in a vegetarian family. Then out with friends I tried chicken and mutton. For me it was cool to eat meat. Since I was raised in a culture where meat eaters were outliers Then I witnessed butchering of a chicken and all that went into it. That was that. This is how I look at the whole thing now.

I rescued our dogs, would never pay someone to breed or breed my dogs. Yes, plants are alive too. They do not bleed, they do not birth their children, they do not cry for their young, nor do they have a nervous system. Plants are not … Read more ». Thank you so much for your blog article. What you wrote is so thoughtful, and moving.

I work on a small farm, and help raise meat animals. Processing time is so very hard, emotionally. The animals are gentle, trusting and innocent.

On the other hand, I sometimes remind myself, to put things in perspective, of how the omnivores like chickens and hogs will pounce on any prey and gobble it up in a flash. We are all part of Nature, as you mentioned, not above it. A lovely and open sharing on the topic. Ignore the naysayers.

Thank you so much for your experience with killing and eating the animals you raised. I have never had to deal with that, but I still remember watching an anime called Silver Spoon, where the main character took extremely good care of the runt of the litter a pig only to know that it would eventually be killed for its meat. I am starting to settle in and get to know the farmer, the critters, the trees, and the land.

I love it here, and I know that mother has a lot to teach me through such a magically mundane place! I found this article because I expect to slaughter our bucklings we have 5 this year! I am a … Read more ». Check out the new Million Gardens Movement website and get gardening! Necessary cookies are absolutely essential for the website to function properly.

This category only includes cookies that ensures basic functionalities and security features of the website. These cookies do not store any personal information. Any cookies that may not be particularly necessary for the website to function and are used specifically to collect user personal data via analytics, ads, other embedded contents are termed as non-necessary cookies. Such practices may occur, for example, during certain religious festivals where it is common to sacrifice an animal, e.

Our policy on transport of food animals states that we support the humane slaughter of food animals as near as possible to the point of production. Our policy on humane killing states that an animal must be killed instantly or instantaneously rendered insensible to pain until death supervenes. In addition, the method of killing and the skill of the operator are essential aspects of the slaughtering process. For instance, the RSPCA considers shooting by firing a bullet into the brain to be the most consistent and reliable means of humanely killing most livestock animals.