The appeal the Association of Ontario Chicken Processors has
filed against the chicken board’s specialty-markets policy has been adjourned
indefinitely.
The Ontario Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs Appeal
Tribunal has posted a note on its website saying that the appeal, which was
first scheduled to begin June 12, then delayed to June 25, has now been
“adjourned to a date to be determined.”
There were two pressing reasons for the chicken board to
implement the new policy.
One was to find chicken to supply the demand for
kosher-protocol chicken after Sargent Farms bought the only kosher
chicken-processing plant in the province, Chai Kosher Poultry of Toronto.
Now a group of investors, headed by Perl’s Kosher Foods, has
a deal to rent the Chai plant and use the Chai name to meet the demand. The
chicken board is providing initial chickens to get the plant running again and
Sargent Farms has said it will supply chickens.
The other remains a huge issue: CAMI International Poultry
Inc. has been left only a fraction of the chickens it requires to meet the
demand for Hong Kong dressed chicken popular in the Asian markets of the
Greater Toronto area. Its supply was sharply reduced when the Ontario and
Quebec chicken marketing boards and large-volume processors struck a deal to
cut off inter-provincial trade in live chicken.
CAMI was sourcing about 70 per cent of its chicken supply
from Quebec producers and, unlike other Ontario processors, the marketing board
has not ensured that it can get the birds it needs from Ontario farmers who can
no longer ship birds to Quebec.
Ironically, a judge has ruled that a group of chicken
farmers in Eastern Ontario can continue to market their birds to processors in
Quebec. That decision came as the conclusion to a long legal battle.
CAMI is also asking the courts to intervene so it can buy
the chickens the company needs to meet the Asian-market demand.
I find it ironic - no, maddening - that the Ontario chicken industry
has been able to relatively swiftly find a solution for the Jewish community’s
demand for kosher chicken, but has shown no inclination to satisfy the Asian
community’s demand for Hong Kong dressed chicken.
