The Egg Farmers of Ontario marketing board blew the whistle
and the Canadian Food Inspection Agency shut down a Grey County egg grader
serving small-flock owners.
I hope that's pure coincidence as the egg board sends its lawyer to Guelph this week to try to derail an appeal filed by small flock owners.
Glenn Black has filed the application with the Ontario Ministry of Agriculture and Food Appeal Tribunal.
Al Tobey of RR 6, Owen Sound, says he plans to comply with
CFIA orders and have his grading station open before the May 12 CFIA order to comply with standards.
The egg board called the CFIA in after a customer complained
about bad eggs, but Tobey says he hadn’t done any grading for that customer for
three to four weeks prior to the complaint.
But a CFIA inspector from Walkerton found fault with the
operation.
“They came up
here and of course, everything was wrong,”Tobey told veteran farm reporter Jim
Algae of the Owen Sound Sun Times newspaper.
“They shut us down until we made
some changes to the egg house and getting back to where the rules and regulations say they should be,”
Tobey said.
Tobey’s main business is cash crop farming; he grades eggs
to serve mainly organic growers and other small-flock operators.