Ontario egg farmers need to speak up
While attending the annual meeting of the Egg Farmers of Ontario marketing board this week (March 29 and 30, 2011), it was clear that a lot of farmers have concerns about information coming out of court records about some situations in their industry.
Their main concern is the allegations that Bill Gray of L.H. Gray & Sons Ltd. has been cheating by putting up to five per cent cracks into packs of retail-ready Grade A eggs. Court records in Oshawa indicate that lawyer Don Good, acting for Sweda Farms Ltd., believes that what Gray was doing was also being done by Joe Hudson and his Burnbrae Farms Ltd. operations. Together the two handle more than 90 per cent of Ontario’s egg gradings.
It makes no sense for farmers to spend considerable time and effort complying with new on-farm food-safety protocols if grading stations are allowing cracks to go to market as Grade A eggs. There are considerable food-safety and quality issues to selling cracks as fresh eggs because harmful bacteria in wash water could seep into eggs through the cracks.
At the very least, the Egg Farmers of Ontario ought to be demanding that the Canadian Food Inspection Agency thoroughly investigate these allegations. Ideally, the egg board would hire professionals to conduct its own investigation.
One thing that might be done relatively easily is to check the percentage of nest-run eggs from Alberta and British Columbia that meet Grade A standard, and compare that with the averages at Gray and Hudson’s grading stations.
Egg farmers ought to also ask why the board of directors and staff rejected an offer from Good to exempt their general manager, Harry Pelissero, from the lawsuits that have been filed against the egg board, Gray and Burnbrae. Instead of picking up on that offer, the board has decided to “vigorously defend” itself and staff in the lawsuits. Why are egg farmers allowing their levies to be used to pay high-priced lawyers to pursue a defence that seems unnecessary?
Egg farmers ought also to ask whether staff has provided favouratism to Gray and Burnbrae, or a standard of service that differs substantially from Sweda Farms Ltd. To find out, the directors could exercise its governance responsibilities to hire outside consultants to examine the situation.
In similar fashion, the board could turn to outside consultants to check personnel management and issues within the staff, including several who have left since Pelissero became general manager, and could hire auditors to check the integrity of the eggs-for-processing and surplus-declared eggs.
These kinds of independent checks by outsiders are standard procedure for governance-style boards of directors, but to my knowledge have never been pursued by any supply-management marketing board in Ontario. Then again, no board has faced the nature and degree of scandals as the Ontario egg board faces in connection with documents the courts have in hand from Norman Bourdeau, a former employee who is blowing the whistle on Bill Gray.
And, finally, where is the Ontario Farm Products Marketing Commission in all of this? How can it reasonably refuse to conduct an inquiry along the lines requested by Good and Bourdeau? Hiding behind the smokescreen of court action is a lame excuse. There are more than enough issues that lie outside of the aims of the lawsuits that should alarm and engage the commission.
But, then again, maybe the commission is not really a supervisor or marketing boards, but an apologist and cheerleader for them. And maybe the politicians who appoint members for the commission are simply lacking courage when it comes to tangling with marketing boards.
