Now that it has lost its sole marketing authority, the directors and staff of Ontario Pork are becoming quite secretive.
For example, farmers attending the annual meeting of the Waterloo Pork Producers Association at Linwood today asked, but were not told, how much market share the board's new arm's-length marketing service holds in the industry.
That, said two directors of the board, is a trade secret, just the same as the major packers won't divulge their market shares. However, in fact, two of the big three had representatives at the meeting and they did divulge their market shares - Quality Meat Packers of Toronto with about 35 per cent, Conestoga Meat Packers of of Breslau with about 25 per cent.
Fearman's Meat Packers of Burlington has most of the rest. Small-scale plants have about five per cent.
The other, and bigger, secret is the support levels in the new Risk Management Program for hog producers.
The farmers were told they will be briefed at meetings, but they won't be allowed to take notes or make recordings. The fear is, apparently, that hog farmers in the United States will learn the details and use them to hit Canada with trade actions that will make it difficult to export pork to the U.S.
I don't doubt for a minute that the U.S. hog producers will try to hit Canadians with trade actions, but I also don't doubt for a minute that they will not learn the details of the new Risk Management Program.
Those who will be kept in the dark are the Ontario taxpayers who fund a significant share of this new government program.
Federal Agriculture Minister Gerry Ritz has repeatedly and outspokenly warned Ontario against precisely this kind of price-support program, and precisely because the U.S. might retaliate.
Maybe that's the real reason for the secrecy - embarrassment over the risks they have brought on themselves.
