Wendy Stueck

Vancouver — From Thursday's Globe and Mail
Published on Wednesday, Apr. 07, 2010 7:14PM EDT

Last updated on Wednesday, Apr. 07, 2010 9:23PM EDT

.At the University of Victoria, rabbits are cute, plentiful and controversial: Talk of culling makes people squeamish and the university recently spent $18,000 on an unsuccessful program to sterilize and relocate some of the animals.

In other parts of the province, however, there are plans afoot to bring bunnies to the table – on a plate.

The owner of a mobile slaughterhouse unit based in Cranbrook says he has had several requests to make his facility – up to now used solely for poultry – available for rabbits.

“I gave one customer the okay, because she has the clientele,” said Gerald Brinders, who launched the Kootenay Mobile Poultry Abattoir last year and is working on a second unit to serve a growing number of customers and reduce travel time over steep mountain roads. “People might be raising rabbits for themselves or for their family, and this would allow them to sell an inspected product to consumers.”

One would-be producer is Kyersten Kerr, who runs a hobby farm near Creston and grew up raising bunnies as pets.

She’s considered raising rabbits as food for years, but when she approached local slaughterhouses, they said they weren’t interested in handling small numbers of rabbits in their highly regulated facilities.

Under provincial legislation introduced in 2004, all meat for human consumption in B.C. must come from a provincially or federally licensed slaughter facility. Slaughterhouse owners spent hundreds of thousands of dollars to upgrade plants, and some small operators closed their doors.

As part of the transition, governments helped pay for mobile slaughterhouses that would cater to smaller producers who would otherwise have to ship their animals hundreds of kilometres to a licensed plant. The first mobile plant began operating in B.C.’s Peace River district in 2007 and processes beef, buffalo and lamb.

Mr. Brinders started building his $125,000 plant – a converted motor home – two years ago and was licensed last year, when, during peak periods, he processed as many as 500 chickens a day. Now, he wants to serve rabbit producers in the region as well.

“He was the first abattoir locally even willing to talk about it,” said Ms. Kerr, who’s planning to buy a couple of breeding animals once she has finalized arrangements with Mr. Brinders.

The rabbit processing requires a green light from the Canadian Food Inspection Agency, which already oversees Mr. Brinders’s poultry operations.

There would be strong demand for B.C.-raised rabbit, says Hills Foods Ltd. owner Mark Hills, who sells specialty and organic meats, including musk ox and alligator.

“Chefs are demanding local, regional protein, whatever it might be,” said Mr. Hills, who imports rabbit meat from Quebec.

Rabbit is lean, flavourful, can be prepared in a host of different ways, and can be raised with much less food, water and space than pigs or cows, he added.

“If this guy came up with some local rabbit,” Mr. Hills said, “I’d buy everything he could get his hands on, provided he could compete with Quebec on price.”