While it's on the tip of everyone's tongue a couple of weeks ago, the Prime Minister came out with a national strategy for food and to dig deeper on that and see where we stand, our very own Food Professor, Paul Micucci, joins us to talk about his experience in the food processing plant in Toronto.
00:00:11.420but there's a mark up there that Albertans probably didn't bargain for.
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00:00:33.640the conversation today the conversation is while it's on the tip of everyone's tongue a couple of
00:00:39.460weeks ago the prime minister came out with a national strategy for food and to kind of dig
00:00:44.880deeper on that and see where we stand our very own food professor thank you very much paul micucci
00:00:51.440for joining us we've had the food professor uh on before yeah yeah i won't uh proclaim to be the
00:00:57.140food professor but I do you know what I think I mentioned on previous shows Mike uh I grew up and
00:01:03.420I worked actually at a place called Canada Packers which is a food processing plant in Toronto and
00:01:10.980it was very interesting experience when my uh when I was young paint the picture for me because that
00:01:16.020seems to me like a tough job so 5,000 people basically would go to work in this plant and
00:01:22.800uh it was right by the stockyards which is on saint claire avenue down in toronto
00:01:27.680rail cars would come in the cattle would come off it would go to the kill and then basically they
00:01:32.960would you know go to slaughter and then from slaughter it would actually go into the line they
00:01:38.400would you know cut up uh you know cattle into every piece you can imagine and use every piece
00:01:44.560um and then the Heinz of beef would uh be put into the freezers uh and then loaded onto trucks and
00:01:52.480then there was bacon there was uh cold meats there was cheese there was all kinds of different
00:01:58.540divisions that were and then uh guns road which is on the back is where the hooves and all the
00:02:05.240other things were melted down so the smell yeah it's it was a tough neighborhood to be in man
00:02:10.920well it's gone now it is yeah it's gone now and quite frankly there's a whole story to that
00:02:15.300because it actually became a housing development that was built on top of it which i don't i don't
00:02:19.940even know how but it was and quite frankly i know i'm not living there anytime soon no that
00:02:25.380neighborhood still has a certain stench to it i'll be honest with you at times yeah well guns
00:02:29.560road still exists so there still are some food processing or there's still some uh things
00:02:34.880happening on the back with respect to leather and and okay animals so there is a slight smell
00:02:40.440not even compared to what it was before but you know i used to get on my car and it was just
00:02:45.000wretched you know the first half hour just about to be sick yeah uh going in and we used to go in
00:02:51.000so interesting and i'll tie it up but it was an interesting story we used to go through and we
00:02:56.200used to get our whites um and it was uh it was basically a jacket a white jacket white pants
00:03:03.000and uh because i had graduated from the kill area the stockyards where they used to bring the cattle
00:03:08.920over into and the kill line into night loading i used to get this white hat and it was because
00:03:15.560you're working in a freezer all night right so it was warm clothes um and i used to start off
00:03:20.600and i used to get my meat hooks so they give me my meat i everyone got two meat hooks who worked
00:03:26.040in loading and all night long uh the guy would be up on a perch and you would walk over and it'd be
00:03:33.400the number on it for the truck you were loading and you would put your meat hooks in and he would
00:03:38.040knock uh the the hind of beef off onto your shoulder and you would carry it across the
00:03:44.120loading dock and drop it into the trucks all night so you do eight to ten hours a night that's pretty
00:03:49.800manual labor that was really and that's carrying beef on your shoulders a heavy job and there were
00:03:56.200you know it's interesting and that's how strong so they used to call them the bullhunk gang
00:04:00.200uh which were the guys who did it full time and they were uh these uh little you know uh eastern
00:04:06.520european italian uh these little guys but they were all muscled like a hundred percent and that's
00:04:12.120what they did all night and they would joke around throughout the night and they would
00:04:16.200they would actually carry like a hundred pound 150 pound hind of beef with no hands on their
00:04:21.320shoulders and they would do all this crazy stuff and so my dad which is interesting because my dad
00:04:27.800you know uh was a truck driver and he had trucks and worked there uh and uh basically he would come
00:04:35.160in and he would show off also and he would grab like 250 200 pound hinds of beef and he would
00:04:43.960throw them on each shoulder and he would carry them across the dock and put them on a and that's
00:04:48.600how strong these guys were because this is dead different era man this is dead weight yeah right
00:04:54.360so i ate you know you know you think i wouldn't eat red meat but i did eat a lot of red meat
00:04:59.320because i was around it the whole time and the interesting thing when we got ready for this show
00:05:03.800I said to Christophe when we were doing the prep, I said, out of curiosity, what are people in Alberta, Ontario, and Nova Scotia paying for top surly on Canada Day?
00:05:16.180I mean, this is almost a luxury item for Canadians now.