In a decision released last week, the Court of Appeal for Ontario ruled that the provincial Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs owed a duty of care to Aylmer Meat Packers and its owner, Butch Clare, when it took over the company’s slaughterhouse in 2003 amid the extensive investigation into contaminated meat.
The ministry took control of the plant for 19 months before returning it to Aylmer, but “by then the business was ruined,” Judge Peter Lauwers wrote for the three-judge panel.
The appeal focused largely on Clare’s lost opportunity to sell the factory due to the government takeover of the abattoir. “But for the profession of ministry, Mr. Clare could sell,” Lauwers wrote.
Aylmer and Clare had sued the province for negligence, trespass and conversion and sought damages, but their claim was dismissed at trial. Lowers said the judge erred in several ways, including conflating the province’s duty of care with the standard of care.
“In my view, the department’s duty of care was to ensure that its regulatory actions did not unreasonably or needlessly harm Aylmer’s business interests,” Lauwers wrote. But her actions in taking over the plant hurt the business, he wrote.
Aylmer’s attorney, Jonathan Lisus, said the appeals court was right to be concerned about the department’s intrusive powers. “The lesson is that the court will hold regulators accountable for the consequences of their conduct,” Lisus said.
Ontario’s Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs declined to comment. A spokesperson for the province’s Attorney General’s Department said the province is reviewing the decision, but would not comment further.
The ruling said Aylmer Meat Packers was considered one of the busiest slaughterhouses in the province, specializing in processing cows at the end of their milk production and cows that could not stand or walk but were otherwise healthy for slaughter.
In 2003, a whistleblower told the ministry that the plant in Aylmer, Ont., southeast of London, was illegally processing sick and disabled cows, as well as cows that had died other than at slaughter — all of which are illegal. the law, the ruling said. The whistleblower also alleged the company used an illegal federal stamp on uninspected corpses, the decision said.
That led to undercover surveillance of the plant by Department of Natural Resources inspectors between May and August 2003, the ruling said. Those inspectors saw suspicious activity and the ministry, along with Ontario Provincial Police officers, raided the slaughterhouse, the judge wrote.
Police launched a criminal investigation and eventually laid charges against Aylmer, Clare and his two sons. In 2007, Aylmer and Clare pleaded guilty to selling uninspected meat and selling meat wrapped in bags bearing an unauthorized federal meat inspection legend, the ruling said. Many charges against Clare were dropped, as were all charges against his sons.
After the 2003 raid, the Ontario Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs took control of the plant, which ceased operations that day, the appeal decision said.
The ministry brought in police and later security and “held” all the meat in the factory in sealed freezers, the document says. There were nearly 270,000 kilograms of meat in freezers and another 22,000 kilograms of meat that spoiled within the first 10 days of the government taking over the factory.
“What followed the department’s initially appropriate actions to detain the meat was a litany of bureaucratic incompetence,” Lowers wrote.
Aylmer refused to voluntarily condemn the meat, so it remained in the freezer, the ruling states. But the freezer began to break down in 2003, shortly after the ministry took over.
“The meat went bad because the ministry, having noticed the freezer malfunction in September 2003, took no action to repair it for 10 months,” Lawers wrote.
It would cost $20,000 to repair the freezer, but the court heard during the civil trial that the ministry “generally wanted to avoid such an ‘expenditure'” even though it was already paying about $40,000 a month in security costs.
After the raid, Aylmer lost its slaughterhouse license, so Clare looked to sell it, the ruling said. It was a good time to sell meat processing plants, with another of Clare’s abattoirs in Kitchener selling for $5.5 million.
“The ministry’s unjust occupation of the factory included the presence of security, a locked freezer and a factory in disarray,” Lauwers wrote. “These are clearly not features that would attract a buyer.”
This report by The Canadian Press was first published on August 16, 2022.
