Ontario government ordered company to pay $3.5 million at center of 2003 contaminated meat investigation

The Supreme Court of Ontario ordered the provincial government to ordered the payment of $3.5 million. He pointed to the state's "barrage of bureaucratic incompetence" by temporarily taking over the business of a company that was at the center of the tainted meat scandal nearly two decades ago.

In a ruling announced last week, the Ontario Court of Appeals ruled that the province's Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries owed a duty of care to his Aylmer Meat Packers and their owner Butch. I have made the decision that there is Clare said when he took over the company's slaughterhouse in 2003, amid widespread investigations of tainted meat. It managed for months, but "by then the business had collapsed," Judge Peter Lauwers wrote for the three-member committee.

The appeal centered primarily on Claire's loss of the opportunity to sell her plants because the government had taken over the slaughterhouse. could have done," Lauwers wrote.

Aylmer and Clare sued the state for negligence, trespassing, and conversion, seeking damages, but their claims were dismissed at trial. Mr Lauwers said the judge erred on several counts, including confusing the state's duty of care with standard care.

The Department's duty of care, then, was to ensure that its regulatory actions did not unduly or unnecessarily harm Aylmer's business interests," Lauwers wrote. But buying the factory hurt his business, he wrote.

Aylmer's attorney, Jonathan Lisus, said the appellate court was rightfully concerned about the ministry's intrusive powers. "The lesson to be learned is that courts are held accountable for the consequences of regulators' actions," he said.

The Ontario Department of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs declined to comment. A spokesman for the Attorney General's Department said the state is considering a decision but declined to comment further.

According to the ruling, Aylmer Meat Packers is considered one of the busiest slaughterhouses in the state, with cows that have finished dairy production and cows that cannot stand or walk but are ready for slaughter. We specialize in healthy cattle processing.

In 2003, an undercover informant reported that a plant in Aylmer, Ontario, southeast of London, Ontario, was producing sick, disabled, and sick cows. told the ministry that it was illegally disposing of Died by methods other than slaughter — all in violation of the law, the ruling said. The informant also alleged that the company used illegal federal stamps on uninspected corpses. secret surveillance was carried out, the decision said. These inspectors saw suspicious activity and the department raided the slaughterhouse with officers from the Ontario Police Department, the judge wrote.

Police launched a criminal investigation, eventually indicting Aylmer, Claire, and his two sons. In 2007, Aylmer and Clare pleaded guilty to selling uninspected meat and selling meat wrapped in bags bearing the legend of unauthorized federal meat inspection. Many charges have been dropped and all charges against the sons have also been dropped.

After a 2003 raid, the Ontario Department of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs took control of the factory and shut it down the same day, the appeals decision said. there is

The ministry mobilized police and later security forces to "detain" all the meat in the factory in sealed freezers, the document said. There were about 270,000 kilograms of meat in the freezer and another 22,000 kilograms of his meat that spoiled in his first ten days after the government took over the factory.

"What followed the ministry's initially well-deserved meat embargo was a series of bureaucratic incompetence," Lauwers writes.

Aylmer refused to voluntarily denounce the meat, so it was kept in the freezer, the decision said. But it wasn't long after the ministry took over in 2003 that the freezers began to malfunction.

"When the ministry discovered he had a freezer malfunction in September 2003 and took no action to repair it for ten months, the meat rotted," Lauwers wrote. .

Repairing the freezer cost $20,000, but the court found in a civil case that despite the ministry paying about $40,000 a month in security costs, "generally, We wanted to avoid that kind of 'expenditure'."

After the raid, Aylmer lost its slaughterhouse license, so Clare tried to sell it, the ruling said. Another Clare slaughterhouse in Kitchener was sold for $5.5 million, so it was a good time to sell the meat processing plant.

"The Department's unlawful occupation of factories included the presence of security guards, locked freezers, and dilapidated factories in disarray," Lauwers wrote. "These are clearly not buyer-attractive features."

This Canadian Press report was first published on August 16, 2022.