Ontario's Supreme Court has ordered the state government to pay $3.5 million to a company at the center of a tainted meat scandal nearly two decades ago. I pointed out "Litany". “bureaucratic incompetence” in temporarily taking over a business;
In a ruling announced last week,the Ontario Court of Appealsruled that the province's Department of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs has ruled that Aylmer Meat Packers and its owner Butch Clare Aylmer took over the company's slaughterhouse in 2003, amid widespread investigations of tainted meat. "By then the business had collapsed," Justice 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.
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but their claims were dismissed in court. Lauwers said the judge erred on several counts, including confusing the state's duty of care with standard care.
"In my view, the Department's duty of care was to ensure that its regulatory actions did not unduly or unnecessarily harm Aylmer's business interests," Lauwers wrote. increase. 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 power. "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 cattle that have finished dairy production and those who cannot stand or walk but otherwise specializes in the processing of healthy cattle suitable for slaughter.
In 2003, a confidential informant alleged that a plant in Aylmer, Ontario, southeast of London, Ontario, illegally processed sick, disabled, and non-slaughter dead cattle. He told the ministry that he did. All of these violate the law, the ruling said. The informant also alleged that the company used illegal federal stamps on uninspected corpses.
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Therefore, from May to August 2003, the factory was under covert surveillance by inspectors from the Ministry of Natural Resources, 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.
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After the 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.
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 Department's well-deserved initial action in detaining the meat was a series of bureaucratic incompetences," Lauwers writes.
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Aylmer refused to voluntarily denounce the meat, so it was kept in the freezer, the decision said. I'm here. But it wasn't long after the ministry took over in 2003 that the freezers began to malfunction.
"The Food Department discovered he had a freezer malfunction in September 2003 and took no action to fix it for 10 months, causing the meat to rot," Lauwers wrote.
Repairing the freezer cost $20,000, but the court found in a civil case that despite the ministry having already paid about $40,000 a month in security costs, the "generally We wanted to avoid such 'expenditures'," he said.
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 deteriorating factories in chaos," Lauwers wrote. "These are clearly not buyer-attractive features."
© 2022 The Canadian Press
