Marvin Ungerman, the famous boxer turned chicken farmer, is
ready to punch out the chicken marketing board.
He learned from his Quebec processor on Thursday that he
will have to find a new processor in Ontario.
He was stunned that the ban on Quebec-Ontario trade in live
chickens came so suddenly without any notice from the chicken board.
“I’m two weeks from placing my chicks, and now I have to
suddenly make arrangements,” he said.
A staff person at the chicken board said he should have
known this was coming because the board has been saying for months that the
deal will take effect with the beginning of the next six-week quota period in
September.
Ungerman said he’s not the only one who was caught by
surprise. Even senior executives at Maple Leaf Foods Inc. were surprised, he
said of a friend there.
Ungerman is also angry that the chicken board has been
circulating a list of all of the Ontario farmers who were shipping birds to
Quebec processors to Ontario chicken processors.
He said his out-of-province business ought to be
confidential.
“I wondered why I was getting calls from Ontario
processors,” he said, “asking me what I was going to do” after September.
He said he’s likely to end up being forced to ship to Maple
Lodge Farms Ltd. “which I don’t want to do. I had experience with them before.”
Maple Lodge is apparently one of the Ontario processors who
will be short of chicken as a result of the trading ban.
Quebec processors are looking for about 800,000 kilograms of
chicken from their farmers to replace contracts they had with Ontario farmers.
What’s not clear is whether Quebec succeeded in getting
enough additional quota to offset losses to Nadeau Poultry Ltd. in New
Brunswick, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Maple Lodge.
As recently as last week, that demand was seen by some as a
deal breaker.
