VANCOUVER (NEWS1130) – The regional executive vice president of the Public Service Alliance of BC is wondering if the province is going to be ready to take on its own meat inspections by 2014.

That’s when the Canadian Food Inspection Agency hands that responsibility over to the province.

Bob Jackson, who is also a former meat inspector, says there is a lot of work to do, to be ready for the deadline.

“The province would have to come up with some method of delivering the inspection program. That would involve hiring staff and providing infrastructure to carry out those inspections,” he notes.

And by infrastructure, he means the offices, cars, and manuals for the inspectors.

The cost of getting the new provincial meat inspectors up and running is another concern.

“The provinces have been getting an incredible deal, I would say, over the past number of years in their agreements with the CFIA. The provinces pay a fixed rate per hour and it doesn’t come near covering the actual cost of providing the program,” says Jackson, who points out the transition is happening at a time the province is stressing it doesn’t have any extra money.

He says he’s not even sure there would be enough qualified inspectors to hire, as the ones now doing the job in BC on behalf the CFIA,  he believes, are already lining up other jobs.