The Chicken Farmers of Ontario marketing board has granted
Sheik Halal Poultry Farms new-entrant status.
The board will allocate the business chicken supplies
beginning quota period A-128, which begins Dec. 28.
Sheik Halal is based at Durham, says it is the largest halal
duck processor in Canada and that it also processes halal-standard beef, goat,
lamb, quail, pheasant, partridge and pheasant.
Meanwhile the board is silent about what it’s doing with
five applications to serve the Ontario market for kosher chicken.
It has not responded to e-mails requesting information since the board of directors had five applications on the agenda for its July 22 meeting.
There has been no Ontario kosher-standard chicken since Chai
Kosher Poultry of Toronto was sold to Sargent Farms.
Most of the demand is being met by a Montreal processor.
The marketing board testified during a tribunal hearing in
mid-July that it is working on meeting the demand for kosher chicken and for
specialty chicken.
The only market it has, however, moved to satisfy is for
special-breeds chickens for the Hong Kong dressed (feet and legs left on),
mainly for Asians in the Toronto area.
The volume it has granted is far short of the market that
was developed by CAMI International Poultry Inc. of Welland, Ont., before the
Quebec and Ontario marketing boards conspired to stop inter-provincial trade in
live chicken, effectively shutting down the majority of CAMI’s business in Hong
Kong dressed chicken.
