Restaurants Canada has written an open letter to Ontario
Premier Kathleen Wynne asking for transparency for the chicken-pricing formula
implemented earlier this year by the Chicken Farmers of Ontario marketing
board.
The association that speaks for Canadian restaurant owners says
in its open letter that “In a recent Globe and Mail article entitled “It’s time to ensure Canada’s food pricing
formulas are transparent, fair”, Mr. Geri Kamenz (chairman) of the
Ontario Farm Products Marketing Commission characterized the province’s current
chicken pricing formula as “a black box that few people understand”, adding
“this is just not good enough for the 21st
century.”
“He also revealed the commission has attempted
“to prod farmers for three years now to come up with a fair and transparent
pricing scheme.”
The Globe said “this outdated production
framework harms business and consumers alike by artificially raising the price
of chicken."
Earlier this year the commission forced the chicken board to update its feed-conversion formula, resulting in a significant decrease in the prices the marketing-board farmers could charge processors for their chicken.
The restaurateurs write to Wynne that “waiting
three years for chicken farmers to publish a simple and forthright price
formula for a food staple many Ontario families put on their dinner table every
night is simply not acceptable.
“Nor is it acceptable that the vested interest
with the greatest stake in the price set for chicken, the producers themselves,
should be in charge of the price-setting program.”
Ontario prices are followed closely by provincial
marketing boards from coast to coast, explaining why a national association is
calling on Ontario Premier Wynne to take action.
She was her own minister of agriculture at the
time that Kamenz ordered the chicken board to reduce its prices.
Glenn Black of Providence Bay on Manitoulin
Island has questioned another specific aspect of the pricing formula – the prices
feed mills report to the marketing board and subsequently to the commission.
Black has noted that poultry ration prices
increased far more than Ontario rations for livestock and by far more than
poultry-ration price increases in the United States.
At one time the chicken pricing formula used the
transparent prices for corn and soybeans as a surrogate for feed-ration price
changes, but that was changed to a survey of feed mills to determine their
retail prices for chicken rations.
The open letter to Wynne asks her to “
Immediately hand the file to an independent third party – one with no
affiliation to the chicken industry – with direction to swiftly complete the
price review process that has dragged on for several years.
“Interested stakeholders, such as the Chicken
Farmers of Ontario and Restaurants Canada, among others, can then play a useful
role as interveners before the established open forum of discussion and debate.”
