A group of 22 French-speaking chicken farmers in Eastern
Ontario has won a long legal battle with the Chicken Farmers of Ontario
marketing board.
After many months of confrontations, both the chicken board
and the Association of Ontario Chicken Processors backed down in court and
agreed that the farmers can continue to market their birds to processors in
Quebec.
They also won the right to deal in the French language.
While the judge ruled in favour of the farmers, details are
apparently still under negotiation because the chicken board and processors
have implemented a ban on trading chicken across the Ontario-Quebec border.
The victory for the Ottawa-Valley French-language farmers
means that Quebec will end up with more birds than the originally-negotiated
deal between the Ontario and Quebec marketing boards and processors.
A group of small-volume Ontario processors was deliberately
kept out of the negotiations and one of them, CAMI International Poultry Inc.,
has been left far short of enough birds to keep its Asian-market customers
satisfied with Hong Kong dressed birds (head and feet left on).
This is far from the first time the French-speaking chicken
farmers in Eastern Ontario have been in tense battles with marketing board
authorities.
They originally set up their barns and production without
holding Ontario quota. They sold to Quebec processors, also without holding
Quebec quota.
It took years for the Ontario marketing board authorities to
“discover” the large-volume production and then try to shut them down.
Eventually there was a truce which involved giving the
farmers “national” quota so they could continue business as before.
Later still, the Ontario board incorporated them into its
system and granted them Ontario quota. That meant that all other chicken
farmers in Ontario yielded a share of the market to make room for these 22
producers.
One of the issues that will, no doubt, be under dispute now
is whether Ontario will be compensated at the national level for the loss of
birds to Quebec processors and whether Quebec producers will have to take a cut
to make room for the birds from the 22 Eastern Ontario producers.
The Ontario chicken board is also facing several other huge
challenges, including:
- _* Failure to persuade the partners in the national
agency to provide enough additional production to ensure that the kosher market
is filled. Those customers lost their supplier when Chai Kosher Poultry of
Toronto was purchased by Sargent Farms.
- * A court challenge filed by CAMI International
Poultry to get chickens to keep its customers supplied.
- * Pressure from small-flock
owners to have their limit for quota-free production increased from 300 to
2,000 birds per quota period (six weeks).
- * Charges that chicken-feed
prices have been manipulated to inflate the prices farmers can charge for
chicken.
- * Ongoing free-trade
negotiations that include pressure to reduce the degree of trade protection for
Canadian farmers and processors. The issue boils down to price for chicken.
