Monday, January 9, 2012

Black market chicken

According to a researcher at Lakehead University, there's a thriving black market in chicken production and marketing in the local community around Thunder Bay.

I guess that's a reflection of the fact that the Chicken Farmers of Ontario has its inspectors busy scouring the back roads of Southwestern Ontario, looking into Old Order and Amish Mennonite farms to find "illegal" chicken production.

The marketing board has always paid scant attention to Northern Ontario. For example, it didn't know that the Burt family had chicken production operating when it set up its marketing board, but moved promptly to block the family's current generation from being granted enough production quota to make chicken a viable option on Manitoulin Island.

The people at Thunder Bay also want to be able to produce and process enough chicken and turkey to be viable serving local people.

But if they can't afford to buy quota from millionaires in Southwestern Ontario, forget it.