It's nice to see that the Ontario Farm Products Marketing Commission has brought hog processors and the marketing board together to talk about value-chain collaboration.
Fearman's and Quality Packers provided a report during the recent annual meeting of the Ontario Pork marketing board, but it's significant that Conestoga Packers, the third-largest in the province, did not attend the initial meeting.
Calling this a collaborative value chain initiative is a nose-stretcher. It's really little more than talk about ways to get past the most damaging aspects of the currently-fragmented supply chain.
What's really missing in this venture is leadership to focus attention on consumers. In Canada, that's the big three supermarket chains.
But what is quite possible is to develop value-chain management with an overseas customer such as a retail chain in Japan.
Maple Leaf had an initiative going with its packing plant in Lethbridge, Alta., tied in with specific genetics and feeding programs at Hutterite colonies and a DNA-based traceability program.
There are opportunities to make value-chain management work for Ontario's pork industry, but so far all we've got is some weak good intentions and some hot air.
The Ontario Farm Products Marketing Commission is also chairing the new Chicken Industry Advisory Committee. There, again, there is only some weak good intentions and a lot of hot air.
Heck, the chicken guys can't even understand that their most advanced value chains have been pioneered by the province's smallest chicken processors who are tightly focused on consumers in niche markets, such as organic chicken.
Their main initiative now is trying to shut down inter-provincial movement of chickens, an initiative that has absolutely nothing to offer in terms of improving consumer satisfaction.
And Maple Lodge, the second-biggest chicken processor in the province, is waging war with Sunnymel in New Brunswick.
In other words, the real action remains in fragmenting the chicken supply chain, not on satisfying consumers.
