Source: Michael Fielding, MEATINGPLACE, 8/9/16


A Canadian-American company — the largest veal and lamb producer in North America — says the key to its success is the vast amount of control it holds over the entire process, from producing its own milk replacer to owning the barns and all processing facilities.

“We don’t want to lose customers to another protein. If they look for an alternative, we want to give then an alternative. We want to keep them in the veal and lamb category,” said Harvey Buksbaum, executive director of Montpak International, a long-time leader in Canadian veal processing. Montpak introduced the more affordable grain-fed veal to the United States prior to the 2009 merger with Collingswood, N.J.-based Catelli Brothers to create Catelli Brothers-Montpak International-Delimax.

“It starts with what we put in the fields,” added Fabien Fontaine, the president of the Delimax farming division who knows potential when he sees it. He quietly surveyed the acres of company-owned farmland adjacent to one of its barns. It is that corn and soy and wheat that provide half of the company’s grain-fed supplies.

It’s no less than total control over the entire production chain — and it all begins at the feed plant in Louiseville, Quebec, 65 miles northeast of Montreal.

The company has been producing its own milk replacer since 1998, and the feed division’s general director went to France to buy the technology to make it possible.

The reason: To make it more efficient to mix the milk at the farm into liquid form. It’s also more easily digestible for the calf.

Highly automated
Just three employees work in three shifts in the highly automated 60,000-square-foot facility to produce multiples sizes of bags for both veal and replacement calves.

It’s a complete formula that not inconceivably could be used as baby formula. But it’s not. The calves love it too much — it’s rich enough in nutrients that they could live on it alone (farmers add some fiber to the diet in the form of corn and straw made from the company’s own farmland adjacent to its farms).

When they arrive, calves are loaded into individual pens to be monitored individually for 30 days. Then iron and albumin levels are measured before the calves are added to group housing. President/CEO Alex Fontaine says the “all-in/all-out” process is essential to the health of the calves — single individuals can introduce a virus to the entire group, and the process seeks to avert such a situation. It also allows farmers to clean the whole barn at the same time once a group heads to the slaughterhouse.

The majority of calves are raised just one hour from the slaughterhouse, giving the company the ability to keep stress to a minimum and control its logistics more efficiently. Once on site, calves are held two hours before slaughter.

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