They build on a major change in approach that began about a decade ago, removing draconian bans on producers and small-scale and innovative processors.
Now a new Market Opportunity Program will open new avenues to produce chickens “to address a market opportunity”.
The New Entrant Processor Policy will be updated. It allows new entrants and existing small-scale processors opportunities to “supply markets as a primary processor”. In other words, they will be allowed to market to further processors.
CFO will re-design the Small Whole Bird program, providing opportunity for primary processors to use available supply to meet or address a market opportunity for birds in the 1.60-1.84 kg weight category, such as the Portuguese barbecue or small barbecue bird restaurants,* the board’s website said.
The Portugeuse barbecue marketers have complained in the past about severe shortages.
The Ontario board has been able to partially relax its bans because it finally persuaded the national supply management agency that Ontario needs opportunities to expand production more than the national average to address chronic shortages.
The other provinces are wary of losing markets to competition from Ontario-processed chicken products.
Ontario was so chronically short of chicken, and large-scale processors were so competitive, that farmers were being offered premiums. That drew criticism from the board's regulator, the Ontario Farm Products Marketing Commission which banned premiums.
Then Ontario processors began importing chickens from Quebec and Quebec processors retaliated by buying chickens from Ontario growers.
And then Ontario clamped down on processors, in effect applying supply management to them. And they, in turn, resisted any policies that would enable small-scale and new entrant processors to be able to source chickens without buying "allocation" rights.
