Import cheating revealed in federal documents

There was extensive cheating on chicken imports until recently, briefing notes for federal Agriculture Minister Marie-Claude Bibeau reveal.

During an investigation of imports in 2016, the government determined that importers cheated on six cases under the Duties Relief provisions; they were assessed $72 million in unpaid duties and taxes.

They also lost their licences to import. No company names were revealed in the documents released under Access to Information.

That year the Auditor General reported cheating on $68 million worth of duties on chicken – 71.4 million kilograms under the Duties Relief provisions and 1.4 million kilograms under the Import to Re-Export program.

There were also investigations into the dairy industry abuses of both programs.

After the national agency for chicken producers complained many times, Canadian government officials did some checking with United States companies and found that meat labelled as sourced by broilers was often sourced by spent fowl.

The Canadian Food Inspection Agency also began testing the validity of a DNA probe developed at Trent University that can distinguish between meat from broilers and spent fowl.

As a result of these initiatives, chicken imports have substantially declined.

Another issue for the chicken industry that emerges from the briefing notes is a change that will come into effect when Canada ratifies the new trade agreement with Mexico and the United States.

The Canada Border Services Agency will align its tariff definitions to the World Trade Organization standards and no longer allow duty-free imports of chicken that is simply accompanied by packages of sauce.