It’s 40 years ago that the Toronto news media exposed a
scandal of rotting eggs that almost destroyed supply management.
The news media counted the losses in individual eggs – 28 million
of them – rather than in dozens or the industry standard of boxes of 15 dozen
each.
Beryl Plumtre, head of the Food Prices Review Board
appointed by prime minister Pierre Trudeau, said the egg agency set prices too
high.
Eugene Whelan, agriculture minister appointed by Trudeau,
staunchly defended supply management and called the rotting eggs a “minor
catastrophe”.
Joe Hudson, owner of the largest egg-farming business and
egg-grading station in Canada, was an outspoken critic of supply management and
elected by the farmers whose eggs he bought to represent them as a director on
the Ontario egg marketing board.
He was exposed by the Kitchener-Waterloo Record for importing
eggs from the United States, adding to the Canadian surplus that was pushing
the Canadian Egg Marketing Agency to the brink of bankruptcy.
Ontario agriculture minister Bill Newman dismissed the
entire board of directors of the Ontario egg board, not just Hudson, because he
said his powers did not allow him to dismiss an individual director, but he
could dismiss the entire board.
Hudson was subsequently re-elected.
He eventually changed his opinion about supply management
and became a staunch defender of the system which provided him with benefits
that have mounted into an egg empire worth hundreds of millions of dollars.
Hudson has outlived Plumtre, Trudeau and Whelan.
