The national chicken agency has turned down Ontario and
Alberta requests for increased production rights to meet demand for specialty
chicken, but now has granted those rights to British Columbia.
Kerry Froese, British Columbia’s director on Chicken Farmers
of Canada, told his local chicken producers recently that it has the green
light to operate two sets of quota, one for regular markets, the other for
specialty markets.
It means B.C. no longer needs to take quota out of its
regular allocation from the national agency to meet specialty-market demand,
Froese said.
Alberta is so upset about not gaining enough production
rights to meet demand that it has pulled out of the national agency.
A mediation process is underway now in an attempt to bring
Alberta back into the agency.
Chicken Farmers of Ontario announced it would implement a
new policy to provide chicken to processors who develop new specialty markets,
but the Association of Ontario Chicken Processors objected and stalled
implementation for more than a year.
The AOCP filed an appeal with the Ontario Ministry of
Agriculture and Food Appeal Tribunal, but shelved it while further negotiations
were undertaken, then revived it last fall and on Tuesday, the day before
public hearings were to begin, cancelled its appeal.
Ontario was turned down when it requested additional
production rights for specialty markets during the most recent meeting of
directors of the national agency.
Quebec led the opposition to Ontario’s request and almost
all of the provinces joined Quebec in the vote.
That leaves the situation as muddy as ever in Ontario where
there are processors eager to buy chicken to serve the Kosher and Hong Kong
Dressed markets, plus small-scale processors begging for chicken to further
develop some smaller niche markets.