After months of resistance, the Ontario Farm Products Marketing Commission has agreed to hold a public hearing into complaints from the Ontario Independent Poultry Processors association.
The independents have, until now, been frozen out of negotiations on how processors’ requests for chicken supplies will be handled if and when an agreement with Quebec emerges.
The Ontario and Quebec chicken marketing boards have an agreement in principle to throttle inter-provincial trade in live chickens.
Associations representing the biggest chicken-processing companies in Ontario and Quebec have been involved in these negotiations, but not the independents.
Geri Kamentz, chairman of the Ontario Farm Products Marketing Commission, has told the independents that they could join the Association of Ontario Chicken Processors if they want a say in the negotiations. The independents, however, left that association years ago because they felt their interests were being trampled by the biggest processing companies, led by Maple Leaf Foods Inc. and Maple Lodge Farms Ltd.
Now the commission has announced a public hearing for Tue., Aug. 30, at the agriculture department head office in Guelph. It is officially to determine whether the independents should be added as members of an advisory committee to the Ontario chicken marketing board.
The advisory committee was, itself, only formally put into place in January. It’s first and main job was to deal with the agreement on trade with Quebec.
Ontario has never had the right, under national supply management, to produce enough chicken to fully satisfy all the demand from all the chicken processing companies. In an effort to stop a bidding war involving premiums, the chicken board set up a system to ration sales to processors.
The smaller, independent processors complained that they weren’t able to get enough chicken to satisfy increasing demand for their local, fresh and niche markets. They found they could get the birds they need from producers in Quebec.
That prompted Quebec processors to restore their lost supplies by buying chickens from Ontario farmers. This inter-provincial trade, often involving trucks passing each other going to and from the Niagara area, grew to about 10 per cent of the market.
It also prompted Ontario processors to offer farmers premiums to keep them from selling their birds to Quebec. Kamenz told the annual meeting of the Ontario chicken board in early 2010 that they had to do something to end premiums.
The first marketing board move was to declare a moratorium barring farmers from increasing this inter-provincial trade. Only those with existing contracts were allowed to continue to “export” to the other province.
This moratorium, intended as an interim measure, has lasted two years. Now the two provinces have an agreement in principle to eliminate this inter-provincial movement of live birds. Quebec, however, is not in a position to implement a deal because it’s in the throes of a provincial review of the marketing board’s powers and policies.
Ontario is awaiting the outcome of the Quebec review, but has said it will seek authority to implement a new set of regulations and rationing for processors as soon as a detailed deal can be negotiated with Quebec.
There remains a question about whether this type of deal will be ruled illegal under recent treaties designed to reduce inter-provincial trade barriers.
The commission has posted notice of its hearings on its website within the Ontario Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs website. There is provision for other organizations and individuals to apply as participants at the hearing.
