The appeal the Ontario Association of Chicken Processors has
filed against the Chicken Farmers of Ontario marketing board has been
cancelled.
Neither the chicken processors or marketing board responded
to e-mails inviting their comments on why the hearing has been cancelled.
John Slot of the Ontario Independent Poultry Processors
Association, which was granted status for the public hearings, said it’s his
understanding that the AOCP dropped its appeal.
That, he said, would leave the chicken board free to
implement its policy of providing chicken to processors who develop new
markets.
The chicken board had set up a process to apply for chicken
and a number of processors had filed applications and expected they would be
able to provide chicken to their customers.
They were left high and dry when the AOCP filed its appeal
and the policy was put on the shelf, pending the outcome of the hearings before
the Ontario Ministry Agriculture and Food Appeal Tribunal.
Slot said it’s not entirely clear what’s going to happen now
and said his association has a meeting scheduled with the chicken board next
week.
If the policy is not implemented now, he says his
association might file its own appeal to get chicken for its members who are
among the most aggressive in identifying and serving new markets.
Two of the most contentious markets, both of them large, are
for kosher-standard slaughter and Hong Kong dressed (head and feet on) for the
Asian market in the Toronto area.
Kosher birds were supplied by Chai Kosher Poultry of Toronto
until it sold its chicken-supply quota to Sargent Farms, then applied for
special market-development supplies from the chicken board, and CAMI
International Poultry Inc. of Welland is seeking supplies to replace about
two-thirds of its needs that it was buying from Quebec farmers until the
Ontario and Quebec marketing boards banned inter-provincial trade in live
birds.
The Ontario chicken board has asked the national agency for
permission to grow more chickens in Ontario to meet the demand from these two
substantial markets, but the other provinces have vetoed that request.
Alberta has said Ontario’s marketing board should simply
regulate how many birds farmers grow and leave it to processors to compete for
birds, not assign each processor a set percentage of available supplies.
However, the Ontario Farm Products Marketing Commission has
made it clear that it will not tolerate a system in which processors bid
premiums – i.e. prices higher than the marketing-board cost-of-production
formula price.
The tribunal hearings were scheduled to begin Wednesday and continue Friday.
