Troy Spicer pleased with results at World Butchers' Championship

Hamilton Spectator

15-05-2025

Belmont butcher Troy Spicer is breaking new ground for the trade, leading Ontario's only certificate program for meat carvers at Fanshawe College, and coaching Team Canada's Juniors team at the World Butchers' Championship (WBC) in Paris, France.
Team Canada's 11 members competed in March with butchers from 16 other nations at the 'Olympics of Butchery,' held at the Paris Expo Porte de Versailles exhibition and conference centre.
About 3,000 spectators and 30,000 live-stream viewers watched the globe's top butchers in action, with a Juniors competition on March 30, and the National Teams competition on March 31. Winners at the WBC – held every three years – were acknowledged during an April 1 gala.
France took top WBC honors, however, Team Canada relished its performance, as the Juniors finished in the middle of a pack of 17 teams, while the Canadian National Team finished fifth in a field of 14 teams, only two points behind the leader.
'We weren't first, but France was very deserving,' Mr. Spicer said in a recent interview. 'Our people felt that we did very well. We all learned from this experience.'
WBC National Team events are comprised of squads of six butchers. Each team starts out with a side of beef, a whole lamb, a whole hog, and five chickens. The entire butchery process is judged, from set up, to organization, cleanliness, skills, 'cookability' of final meat products, and display quality.
The format for the Juniors competition is similar, but with half a lamb, the centre portion of a hog, a bone-in beef sirloin and two chickens.
'The (WBC) competition started in 2011 and it's been steadily growing since then,' said Mr. Spicer, professor and program co-ordinator of Fanshawe's 30-week professional butcher techniques program, a college certificate program offered at the downtown London campus. 'It was New Zealand and Australia that started the competition and (the Paris event) is by far the largest competition that there has ever been.
'In 2022, Canada decided it was going to put together a team to enter for the event in Sacramento,' added Mr. Spicer. Team members were selected from a pool of applicants reviewed by Team Canada management.
Team Canada's first WBC adventure served as a springboard for greater enthusiasm in the trade here, said Mr. Spicer, who was mentored by Don and Nancy Caverly, at Springwater Packers, in Aylmer, a popular, long-lived butcher shop.
'That's a big reason why I'm involved in this, to help promote the industry,' he said. 'The labor challenges in Canada are pretty significant for meat cutters, so I'm happy to get involved any time, bringing awareness.
'We just aren't seeing young people looking at butchery as a career path,' he added. 'My personal mandate is to help the meat industry with their labor challenges and to inspire young people to become butchers.
'It's really a grassroots type of thing that we're doing, but I think it's building now that we've gone to Paris to compete a second time and did well,' said Mr. Spicer. 'We're getting more traction now.'
Team Canada's co-captains in Paris were Peter Baarda, of J&G Quality Meats Ltd., in Burlington, and Taryn Baker, of The Little Butcher in Port Moody, B.C.
The Team Canada Juniors contingent is comprised of: Dylan Miedema, of Townsend Butchers, in Simcoe; Chris McNutt, of Halenda's Meats, in Oshawa; and Ronnie Keely, of Kam Lake-View Meats, in Kamloops, B.C.
The full 11-member team also includes Damian Goriup, Corey Meyer, Brent Herrington, Dave VanderVelde, Ben Carson and Doug Easterbrook.
Team Canada's National Team coach is Carmello Vadacchino, corporate chef and brand ambassador at F. Dick Knives, as well as Food Supplies, firms that are also WBC anchor sponsors. Mr. Spicer was recruited as the Juniors coach about one year ago.
'There is a desire (for butcher shop products here), but it is a bit challenging, because of the way that our society has evolved in this area,' he said. Team Canada was unable to field any competitors in the WBC apprenticeship category, because there are no butcher apprentices in Canada. 'We are incredibly underrepresented in Canada when it comes to training butchers.
'We have steered away from it,' Mr. Spicer explained. 'It's turning away from artisan-style butchery, (toward a) very industrial style. They don't have that in Europe as much as here. It's still regarded in a lot of Europe as a very noble profession and here, we don't look at it that way.
'A lot of the work we're doing with (Team Canada) is to bring that back up,' he said. 'We need the butchers, but it's not respected the way it should be. When you think about it, it's a huge part of our food system for us to consume, and also to export. It's a huge economic driver for the food processing side of things (and) there are a lot of jobs, really good jobs.
'The big reason I started the program at Fanshawe was because when I was working at Springwater Packers, we were trying to hire butchers and it really was very apparent that there were no butchers to hire. I always wanted to get into education so that was the opportunity that I saw there.'
Mr.Spicer's one-year college certificate program is offered through Fanshawe's School of Tourism, Hospitality and Culinary Arts. It was launched in 2017. There's no other program like it in Ontario and only a few others in Canada, including one in Manitoba, several in Alberta, and one in B.C.
In France, he found 100 butchery schools, and 6,000 apprentices.
'For me, I went to school to be a chef and I did a culinary apprenticeship at Fanshawe, and got really interested in where my food comes from, the whole farm to table movement thing,' said Mr. Spicer, an avid hunter and fisherman. 'So I went to Springwater Packers and asked to have a job there so that I could learn about meat and where my meat comes from so that I could make a more informed choice when I'm buying meat.
'Then I fell in love with butchery, which I never ever expected in my life,' he added. 'I can't even put my finger on why. I never cut meat until I started at Springwater Packers. I was good at it, that was the thing, and I enjoyed it.'
Mr. Spicer's parents Dave and Pat Spicer owned and operated Spicer's Bakery in Aylmer for 67 years until their retirement in 2006.
He still remembers the first beef carcass he butchered. 'It was very satisfying to know I had gained enough knowledge and skill to be able to do that and that's why I think we've lost it a little bit with butchery. It's not regarded for the incredible skill and artistry that's actually involved in doing it. It's a trade just like a plumber and a carpenter and some of those things.'
'You start with the whole carcass, and you break it down into smaller pieces, and from those smaller pieces you break it down into even smaller pieces yet, and from those you would cut them into finished products. From a carcass, to a primal, to a sub-primal and ultimately into what we call a retail cut.
'There are differences depending on your style, how you were trained, we all approach things differently, but essentially, yeah, there is a general process and CFIA has all the regulations we have to follow.' The Canadian Food Inspection Agency sets the standards for labelling and nomenclature.
Mr. Spicer said the roots of the education process are in safety: knife care, personal protective equipment, and food safety.
'You have to know how to take care of your knife and use it properly,' he said. 'Once you get that, then you start to apply a little more knowledge to it. So now that I know how to trim a piece a meat, I can go and start to actually harvest that piece from where it is on the carcass, and then I know how to trim and finish it. You almost start more toward the end and work backwards a little bit.
'It is one of the oldest trades, a homestead type of thing,' he continued. 'A family would raise a pig or a cow and then butcher it and eat it.'
Fifteen of Mr. Spicer's students graduated in April, about the same number he's tutored each session since inception. They're all 'great success stories,' destined for industrial butchering jobs, grocery store managers, entrepreneurs, and independent butcher shops, he said.
This generation of butchers are 'moving away from grocery stores to artisan style butcher shops where you get customer service, attention to detail.
'For me it's more about the quality of the end product,' said Mr. Spicer. 'You're going to get a nicer finished product (with trained butchers) and you'll get better customer service through that because the person helping you is probably going to have a deeper knowledge of what they're doing.
'A strip loin, isn't a strip loin, isn't a strip loin, you know,' he added. 'The way they're butchered has a lot to do with the end product as well. You'll have a better eating experience.'