United States-Meat company closes.

UNITED STATES-ANOTHER MEAT COMPANY GOES TO THE WALL.

Natural Meat Company, which was running two controversial Natural Valley Farms facilities in southern Saskatchewan earlier this year, is no longer operating at the sites.

Natural Valley Farms, which owns a slaughter plant near Neudorf and a processing plant at Wolseley, went into receivership last September and is currently shut down.

Clark Sullivan, the court-appointed receiver, said that at the time of receivership, Natural Valley Farms had a lease arrangement with Natural Meat Company, which was operating its facilities. He said once the lease expired on Feb. 10, it was not renewed or extended as the parties could not agree on acceptable arrangement terms.

"The tenant actually left at that point and the buildings and the operations are shut down," said Sullivan. "Where we’re at right now is we’re continuing our efforts to try and find a buyer and new operator for the assets, as a going concern."

He said there are some parties that have expressed interest, and hopefully a sale could be made later this spring or summer. The business plan under which the facilities would operate would then be up to the buyers.

Natural Valley Farms’ facilities gained national attention last summer after hidden camera footage taken at the Neudorf slaughter facility raised questions around slaughtering horses. Sullivan said Natural Valley Farms started as a cattle slaughtering and processing business, but became involved in slaughtering and processing horses for exportation to the European Union. When Natural Valley concluded it couldn’t continue operations, it leased the operations to Natural Meat, a subsidiary of a European company and one of its customers for horse meat.

Questions also came up regarding visits to the slaughter facility by the Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA). CFIA spokesperson Tim O’Connor said Thursday the CFIA suspended Natural Meat’s operating licence in December 2008 due to food safety concerns.