The Chicken Farmers of Ontario marketing board is
undertaking a joint review of its cost-of-production formula that guides the
prices it charges processors.
The announcement comes hard on the heels of blistering
criticisms leveled by Glenn Black of Providence Bay, Manitoulin Island, who has
posted data and charts showing how chicken-feed prices in Ontario have risen
sharply and far more than feed for livestock and dairy cattle and by far more than poultry-feed prices in the United States.
The review will be done jointly with the Association of
Ontario Chicken Processors whose members not only dominate the
chicken-processing industry but are hold significant market shares in
chicken-feed production and hatcheries.
The chicken board says it’s going to use the “best-in-class
methodology” for the study that will involve visiting some farms.
It says one of the “key elements” of this study is “ensuring
data defensibility”.
Black has been engaging in research to embarrass the chicken
board which has refused his push on behalf of small-flock chicken farmers to
have the board increase its exemption from having to own quota from 300 to 2000
chickens per six-week quota period.
In his most recent posting on his website, he draws
attention to a huge increase in imports of “spent fowl” from the United States
and says that has taken up about five per cent of the Ontario market for
chicken.
The chicken board raised the issue of spent fowl imports
when the leaders of five supply-management marketing boards met with Premier
and Agriculture Minister Kathleen Wynne on June 6.
