The Ontario chicken industry is inching closer to deals that
will eventually provide processors with chickens to meet demand in specialty
markets, such as kosher and Hong Kong dressed.
But comments during a tribunal hearing in Guelph on Monday, there are a number of potential stumbling blocks still
in the way nine years after the Chicken Farmers of Ontario acknowledged that
some Ontario consumers can’t buy the type of chicken they want.
Herman Turkstra, lawyer for the Association of Ontario
Chicken Processors, and Geoff Spurr, lawyer for the Chicken Farmers of Ontario
marketing board, persuaded the three-member tribunal panel of the Ontario Ministry of Agriculture and Food Appeal Tribunal that it’s premature to
deal with an appeal filed by John Slot of the Ontario Independent Poultry
Processors association.
Slot filed an appeal asking the tribunal to order the
chicken board to implement the specialty-markets policy it adopted in
February, 2013.
Turkstra and Spurr said that the chicken board now feels
that policy either needs to be scrapped or substantially amended to bring it in
line with recent developments to meet the demand for kosher chicken and for
birds of two special breeds – red-feathered dual0-purpose chickens and Silkie
chickens, both believed to be ideal for the Asian market that wants Hong Kong
dressed birds (i.e. head and feet left on).
The tribunal decided to adjourn the appeal to Sept. 15 and
16 by which time it ought to be clear whether the chicken board will scrap the
policy under appeal and replace it with something else, or whether the existing
policy will remain on the books.
Tribunal panel chairman , lawyer Harold McNeely from Ottawa,
made it clear that the appeal will only go ahead in September if the existing
board policy remains in place.
If it has been scrapped or amended before then, Slot and the
OIPP members will need to decide whether they want to appeal whatever takes its
place.
Turkstra indicated that the Association of Ontario Chicken
processors, which he said accounts for 98 per cent of the chicken processed in
Ontario, will not appeal the special-breeds policy that is being implemented
jointly by the Ontario board and the national chicken agency.
Under that recently-developed policy, the national agency (Chicken
Farmers of Canada) has granted permission for Ontario to increase production,
but only of the dual-purpose and Silkie breeds from Frey’s Hatchery in St.
Jacobs, for processing by one or two local companies. That allocation from the
national agency has been passed on by the Ontario chicken board to only those
farmers who were already raising dual-purpose and Silkie birds.
That exclusive deal for those farmers and their processing-company customers is for quota periods A-125 and A-126 only; each quota period is six weeks.
What remains in open question is whether other processors,
hatcheries and chicken farmers will now be able to gain permission to meet the
full and increasing demand for Hong Kong dressed birds. A related open question
is whether the national agency will continue to allocate production rights for
specific companies; in the past it has refused to make company-specific
allocations.
On the kosher market front, the chicken board has adopted a
policy of inviting proposals from processors to meet market demand. About
700,000 kilograms is being imported from Quebec every six-week quota period now
to fill that market demand.
The board has received five proposals and has asked for an
independent review and recommendations related to those applications. The board
of directors is due to consider that issue when it meets July 22.
Turkstra and Mike Terpstra, executive director of the
AOCP, were non-committal when they were asked whether the processors will file
an appeal if and when the chicken board diverts birds from them to processors
chosen to fill the demand for kosher chicken.
Turkstra told the tribunal that the diversion of birds from
AOCP members to those who want to develop and expand specialty markets is the
number one complaint the AOCP has about the chicken board’s existing – but
never implemented – specialty-markets policy.
The AOCP filed two appeals which had the effect to preventing implementation of the specialty-markets policy. They withdrew both appeals when they felt they could negotiate to persuade the chicken board to only move ahead with its policy if it could gain permission from the national agency to increase production.
Slot told the tribunal there has always been enough chickens
allocated from the national agency to the Ontario chicken board to fill the
demand for specialty markets.
He said that had the policy been implemented as intended
about a year and a half ago, there would never have been a shortage for the
kosher market.
That shortage developed after two events – an agreement
banning trade in live chickens between Ontario and Quebec and the sale of
chicken-supply rights by Thai Kosher Chicken of Toronto to Sargent Farms.
A third development further shorted the Ontario market;
farmers in Eastern Ontario won a court battle so they could continue to market
their birds to processors based in Quebec.
The Ontario board then reacted by approving that diversion
of chickens from Ontario to Quebec. Quebec, in turn, has been losing birds to
Nadeau Farms, a processing plant in New Brunswick that is owned by Maple Lodge
Farms Ltd. of Norval, Ont.
Slot told the tribunal that the chicken board, the Ontario
Independent Poultry Processors association and the AOCP all worked on a
committee set up under the chairmanship of the Ontario government’s Ontario
Farm Products Marketing Commission to come up with the policy that the board
adopted in February, 2013.
Turkstra countered that the AOCP never liked that committee’s
report and recommendations, nor the chicken board’s specialty-markets policy.
He told the tribunal that Slot’s appeal is the wrong appeal
at the wrong time. He said Slot should be made to wait until the chicken board
implements its specialty-breeds and kosher-market policies.
The board also proposes to then follow up with more
consultations about whether there are other specialty markets that need
additional chicken supplies.
The one thing that everyone seemed to agree on at the end of
Monday’s session was Turkstra’s comment to the tribunal that “it’s a mess.”
