Guelph – John Slot, general manager of the Ontario Independent Poultry Processors, argued long and hard during a day-long hearing here that the association ought to be included in a newly-established and powerful committee established to advise the Chicken Farmers of Ontario marketing board.
A panel of four members of the Ontario Farm Products Marketing Commission, led by former agriculture minister Elmer Buchanan, listened patiently to Slot, then to presentations from the Association of Ontario Chicken Processors (AOCP) and the marketing board.
In a nutshell, the independents fear that they won’t be able to buy enough chickens to satisfy their market demands, mainly from niche markets such as organic, Kosher, Halal, dual purpose, raised-without-antibiotics and Cornish-hen birds.
The AOCP counters that it represents the full spectrum of chicken processors, both large and small and many serving the same specialty markets, and it has finally managed, after years of failed attempts, to develop a productive working relationship with the Chicken Farmers of Ontario marketing board.
Lawyer Herman Turkstra, representing the processors, said it would be “disruptive” to interfere with this progress by adding the Ontario Independent Poultry Processors (OIPP) to the Chicken Industry Advisory Committee.
Slot countered that this new spirit of co-operation appears to come at the expense of "throwing the OIPP members under the bus".
Turkstra argued that the commission has three members on the committee to match the three from the AOCP and the chicken board and they, plus the commission member who acts as chair, will ensure the best interests of the industry are served, including the interests of small-scale niche-market processors.
Turkstra and the chicken board also argued that the OIPP is free to make its views known at any time and Henry Zantingh, vice-chairman of the marketing board, assured the commission those views will receive serious consideration.
Zantingh said OIPP concerns could be carried by the chicken board representatives to the advisory committee meetings, but he also made no promises that their views would be presented or supported by the board.
Slot argued that the OIPP has been recognized in industry negotiations for more than a decade, that it was involved in two previous rounds of negotiations to establish allocation of chicken supplies among processors and it is only now that a deal between Ontario and Quebec is in the works that it has been excluded from key meetings.
He said the deal could have serious adverse implications for small-scale processors, such as a one per cent “sleeve” on supplies. Kevin Thompson of the AOCP said that the Quebec-Ontario deal would, in fact, offer smaller-scale processors even greater flexibility than they now have, but did not explain how.
Turkstra said the OIPP can, if it remains concerned about any policy the chicken board eventually adopts as a result of committee recommendations, launch an appeal, first to the chicken board, then to the tribunal (Ontario Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs Appeal Tribunal).
The Ontario-Quebec deal remains to be ratified. The first step is approval from the Quebec government’s body that supervises its chicken marketing board. Then it will be up to the Ontario commission to ratify whatever policies and regulations the Ontario board decides it wants to implement.
Reg Cliche, chairman of the AOCP and an employee of Maple Leaf Foods Inc., the largest chicken processor in Ontario, said the committee has made a great deal of progress developing a strategic plan for the Ontario chicken industry.
He and Thompson said that plan will be unveiled in a matter of weeks or months.
In the meantime, the committee is exercising confidentiality. Slot said that means the OIPP members don’t know what’s coming and have had no input.
Thompson and Cliche both said the OIPP’s involvement would be “disruptive,” but under close questioning by Slot, could not point to anything that the OIPP has done or said that’s disruptive.
Their concern is that the OIPP has a narrow agenda – looking after the interests of its members – and doesn’t take a broader, industry-wide view. Slot countered that the chicken board has valued the OIPP input and views in the past and, in 2005, the two were in agreement on a proposed memoradum of understanding, but it was the AOCP that refused to sign.
Zantingh said the underlying issue is that, under national supply management, Ontario has not been allocated enough chicken production to satisfy demand.
“Differential growth” has become the catch phrase for proposals to resolve that issue and Slot noted that the OIPP and marketing board staff worked long and hard to develop a proposal on differential growth, but then they were shut out by the Ontario-Quebec consultations that led to the agreement in principle.
At the beginning of the hearing on Aug. 30, Slot read two letters, one dated Friday, Aug. 26, from Henry Van Voorst resigning as chair of OIPP, the other dated Monday, Aug. 29, from Cericola Farms Ltd. resigning from the OIPP. Voorst works for Cericola Farms.
Slot said privately that the resignations were done to take them out of the firing line of an AOCP attack.
Terpstra noted that Cericola Farms holds 1.8 per cent market share and all of the other OIPP members combined hold 1.3 per cent market share. Thompson said AOCP represents members with 96.9 per cent market share.
Slot countered that OIPP had 42.2 per cent of the province's processors as members up until the resignation of Cericola Farms.
