The deal comes four months after Cericola Farms was fined $400,000 on charges laid by the Canadian Food Inspection Agency.
The company pleaded guilty to two charges of failing to keep adequate records to enable the supply chain to be tracked.
Cericola is one of Canada’s largest processors of organic and raised-without-antibiotics chicken.
Maple Leaf is one of two chicken processors who dominate the Ontario market. The other is Maple Lodge.
Maple Leaf has arranged to obtain all of Cericola’s plant supply quota linked to its processing plant at Schomberg and has an option to purchase the plant within three years.
Maple Leaf has not said whether it would shutter that plant.
Cericola has processing plants at Bradford and Drummondville, Que., that market about 32 million kilograms of chicken per year.
