CFFO considering its options

The Christian Farmers Federation of Ontario will be “considering all options” when the board meets soon to review the tribunal’s denial of its application for accreditation under the province’s stable-funding legislation.

It’s the second time this year that the tribunal has rejected the CFFO applications and leaves its funding in limbo.

President Lorne Small said the CFFO “is a vibrant organization, with or without stable funding.”

One of the options might be simply walking away from the system and returning to direct membership.

Small said “that’s certainly not the preferred option”. It takes months of effort and a lot of money to recruit members.

That’s why the Ontario Federation of Ontario and the CFFO asked the government to set up a system to collect annual membership fees from farmers.

The tribunal issued its first denial decision in May and Small said the CFFO “answered every issue raised” in that decision “in considerable detail” and said this decision, issued to the CFFO on Wednesday “raises new issues” about membership that go back to May, 2011.

Based on its reasoning in the CFFO decision, the tribunal is likely to soon issue denials to the Ontario Federation of Agriculture and the Ontario branch or the National Farmers Union.

CFFO denied accreditation

The tribunal has once again denied the Christian Farmers Federation of Ontario application to be certified under the Farm Registration and Farm Organizations Funding Act.

It means the CFFO remains stranded without access to membership fees that are collected by government authority and held by Agricorp.

Given the reasons cited by the Ontario Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs Appeal Tribunal, it seems likely that the Ontario Federation of Agriculture and the Ontario branch of the National Farmers Union will also fall short of meeting all of the criteria for accreditation.

One of the chief stumbling blocks for the CFFO arises out of the previous tribunal decision, issued in May, that left the three organizations short of members who have paid a membership fee of at least $195 per year.

That problem arose because the tribunal ruled that farmers are not members until the organization can provide proof that they have explicitly applied to become members

The tribunal also notes that it made a decision in May  of 2010 related to McCrae Farm Ltd. and made sure the CFFO had a copy because it spelled out this issue about membership.

“It is unclear why the Tribunal's warning in the McCrae decision went unheeded,” says the tribunal’s decision.

The tribunal also wrote that “there must be an explicit membership agreement between the parties (consisting of an explicit application for membership, an explicit acceptance of that application, and an explicit communication of that acceptance to the applicant) before the person making the payment can be treated as a member and before the payment can be treated as a membership fee by the farm organization.

“Although not strictly required under the legislation, it would be prudent for any farm organization seeking accreditation to document all of its memberships in writing.”

Several related issues arise out of this membership issue. The organization’s locals have elected executives who fail to meet the criteria to be members.

The legislation says the executive board needs to consider and respond to submissions from members and the tribunal says the CFFO has failed to ensure that happens.

Without a process spelled out in the CFFO bylaws, the tribunal says “submissions could be ignored rather than receiving the consideration and response required by section 5(1)8 of the Regulation.

“While the Tribunal does not doubt the good faith of the executive board, the Tribunal is not satisfied on the evidence before it that there is an established process under which the executive board has a duty to consider an individual member's submissions and to respond to them. Accordingly, the second condition under section 5(1)8 of the Regulation has not been met.”

On the issue of membership fees, the tribunal says “the CFFO, in carrying out its calculations, has ignored the plain wording of section 5(1)12.i, which requires the HST to be backed out of the $195 membership fee in arriving at the revenue number.

“The section specifically states that the number of members is to be multiplied by ‘$195 less the amount that would be payable in taxes if this amount were being charged as a membership fee.’

“Assuming HST of 13 per cent, the correct amount for the revenue calculation is $172.57, since $22.43 of a $195, tax-inclusive membership fee would be attributable to HST.

“The Tribunal appreciates that the CFFO adds HST to its $195 membership fee, but section 5(1)12.i assumes a tax-inclusive membership fee of $195 in parallel with section 5(1)3 of the Regulation, regardless of the actual membership fee charged or tax treatment given by a farm organization.

“Although using the $172.57 number would increase the CFFO's percentages (assuming that they could be meaningfully calculated), it is important to follow the plain wording of the legislation,” the tribunal has ruled.

It ends its decision saying it has no choice but to deny the CFFO application for accreditation because it has failed to meet all of the criteria.

And the tribunal also notes that it has no jurisdiction to grant the CFFO interim accreditation so it can get its hands on the money that has been collected from farmers while it scrambles to meet the requirements as spelled out in the legislation and interpreted by the tribunal.

The legislation gives the tribunal the final say on accreditation; there is no right of appeal to the Minister of Agriculture or to the courts.

                        

The saga of tensions between the British Columbia Egg Marketing Board and tiny egg grader Mountain Morning Farms at Salmon Arm gets ever more curious.

Owner Miles Materi recently gained the right to get information held by the FIRB (the BC Farm Industry Review Board) so he can see how it's supervising the egg board and indications that less-than-wholesome eggs are sometimes making it to market.

Within days, the B.C. Egg Marketing Board served Materi with an injunction to stop him from grading any eggs.

Surprise! Surprise! Rattle these guys cages and they seem to slam back.

The board wants the injunction because it says Materi has no licence to operate as a grading station.

But Materi has a federal licence and is under the Canadian Food Inspection Agency which has rated his facility AAA.

So the B.C. egg board wants to deny consumers eggs from the province's highest-ranked grading station? It stretches credulity to think this is a matter of the egg board protecting the public. Materi thinks it's pure and simple retaliation.

But why is the egg board so exercised about Materi's egg grading operation?
Materi thinks it's because he dares to compete with the dominant egg-grading busienss in the province, Golden Valley.

Coincidentally - or perhaps not so coincidentally - L.H. Gray and Son Ltd. is a major shareholder in Golden Valley. And L.H. Gray and Son Ltd. is fighting a $33-million lawsuit filed by Svante Lind who says his Best Choice egg-grading business was targeted by Gray and that Burnbrae Farms Ltd. and the Ontario egg board formed a conspiracy against him.

The allegations have yet to be tested in court. Lawyers are still sparring over the preliminaries and the crucial issue of how much information in electronic records taken from Gray can be admitted in the court case.

The British Columbia events bear a striking similarity to the allegations outlined in 
Lind's lawsuit.

In September, I wrote about a surprise visit by an inspector for the British Columbia Egg Marketing Board to Materi's barn.

Now it turns out that this fellow, who entered the barn without following any biosecurity protocols, dressed in his street clothes and failing to disinfect his shoes, is in charge of biosecurity for the egg board. Hmmm. Leading by example, I presume.

And Miles says that after checking court records, he believes the board lacked proper authority to exercise that search warrant.

In September I reported that the inspector was accompanied by a disgruntled RCMP officer “who really didn’t want to be there” to help gain entry to the barn.

Miles said the inspector took a few pictures on his cell phone and left.

And where, pray tell, are our politicians who stand foursquare behind supply management marketing boards?

They seem blithely content to allow abuses to continue, perhaps hoping that the boards will crash and burn. If I were an egg farmer in either B.C. or Ontario, I would be demanding inquiries in the hopes that the industry could be put on a sound and honest footing.

Ethanol reduces meat consumption

A new report by FarmEcon LLC says the U.S. requirement to blend 13.8 billion gallons of ethanol into gasoline this year will reduce meat consumption by $30.6 billion.

It says the U.S. public would buy 25 pounds more meat per person during 2013 if no corn was used to distill ethanol.

The report says that without the law requiring gasoline to include ethanol, there would be little demand for the product in the U.S. market.

"Further scheduled increases in mandated ethanol production will likely lead to higher net ethanol exports, further reducing our ability to add value in meat and poultry production," according to Dr. Thomas E. Elam, president of FarmEcon LLC, who authored the report.

FarmEcon is closely connected to the U.S. feed and poultry industries.

                           

XL still has sanitation challenges

The new management at XL Foods Inc. still has problems keeping the beef-packing plant up to snuff.

The Canadian Food Inspection agency reports on its website that water to sanitize knives was not hot enough to kill harmful bacteria.

It also found area that “weren’t adequately cleaned”.

Condensation dripped from overhead pipes. Floor mats that are supposed to disinfect employees boots did not have sanitizing chemicals.

The CFIA ordered the managers, JBS USA, to make corrections and they condemned some meat that went for rendering.

The CFIA is also waiting for lab results before it will release beef trim being held at the plant.

One has to wonder, now that the plant is under intense CFIA scrutiny, how bad conditions were leading up to the E. coli 0157:H7 contamination that resulted in the largest beef recall in Canadian history.

I guess the 48 inspectors in the plant that Agriculture Minister Gerry Ritz assured the public were on top of the situation were not up to the task at hand. However, Ritz continues to hold his cushy cabinet job after being at the helm for two monstrous recalls - this one at XL, the other at Maple Leaf Foods' plant in Toronto that resulted in the death of at least 22 Canadians from Listeria food poisoning.

Beware of hay cheats

The Canadian Forage and Grassland Association is warning farmers buying hay to be wary of cheats.

Some have made large downpayments, but the hay has not been delivered, the association says.

In other cases, full payment has been made but the hay failed to live up to the quality claimed.

The association outlines some precautions, such as asking for two independent references when dealing with somebody you’ve never done business with in the past, asking for a quality-analysis report, checking the hay over to see how it looks and to determine the moisture level and whether there is any mould.

Members of the Canadian Forage Grassland Association operate under a code of ethics. Its membership list is available at www.canadianfga.ca/forage-marketing/ .

Maple Leaf buys Puratone

A day after it announced bank approval to increase its line of credit by $250 million, Maple Leaf Foods Inc. announced it has bid $42 million to buy Puratone Corporation out of bankruptcy.

The purchase includes hogs, barns and some joint ventures.

Last month Olymel bid $65 million to buy Big Sky out of bankruptcy. That deal receiver bankruptcy-court approval this week.

In both cases, the pork-processing companies are buying the hog-farming companies to ensure they get enough hogs for their packing plants.

About a third of Maple Leaf’s hogs at its plant at Brandon come from Puratone, a company that began as a feed mill in Niverville, Manitoba.

Puratone is the third-largest hog company in Canada; Big Sky at Humboldt, Sask., is the largest.