Glenn Black, a small-flock chicken farmer on Manitoulin
Island, has sent a blistering letter of complaints about the chicken marketing
board to the Ontario Farm Products Marketing Commission.
Black says small-flock owners market only 0.033 per cent of
the chicken in Ontario, yet the Chicken Farmers of Ontario marketing board
treats them like a threat to their market.
It also imposes unfair biosecurity standards, he says,
arguing that the threat from diseases is far greater on a “mega farm” and
“monoculture” operation.
He also notes that the marketing board had a seven-year
cycle to audit its quota holders for compliance with food-safety protocols,
recently reduced to a three-year cycle, but still, Black says, far short of
standard industry practice of meeting standards, such as ISO, within one year.
He says the large farms also pose greater biosecurity risks
because there are more industry specialists visiting their barns, there are
shared resources and common sub-contractors each working at a number of
different farms , and some of the largest operations involve “multiple staff members
and distributed authority, jobs, and extended lines of communication, thereby lowering the probability of timely
detection of biosecurity issues and disease outbreak.”
Black wrote the commission that “contrary to CFO’s concerns,
it is the chicken production factories that place the small flocks at greatest risk, for many small flocks are
just 1.6 k km away from these
disease powder kegs of the mega‐factory chicken producers.”
He says “CFO’s regulations, training, auditing, and
enforcement action on these chicken
disease powder kegs of the quota‐bearing chicken production factories appears to
be diluted, delayed, glacially slow in its implementation,
incomplete and mediocre.”
He also cites Canadian Food Inspection Agency data to
complain that there is a far higher rate of condemnations for Ontario-grown
chickens than in Atlantic Canada.
“Where is CFO’s science‐based
proof that the Ontario‐wide
weighted level of current
compliance by small flock chicken farmers to accepted
industry practices is more
hazardous that the Ontario‐wide
weighted level of current compliance by quotabearing
mega chicken factory producers?”
He complains that Manitoulin Island is ignored by chicken
board policies.
Were a quota holder to set up there, his chickens would have
to be trucked hundreds of kilometers south to the nearest processing plant,
then the processed chicken has to make it north again to satisfy local consumer
demand.
This complaint is familiar to the commission because a
Manitoulin-Island producer who runs a government-inspected and licensed packing
plant was unable to get a break from the chicken board to produce fo the local
market. He was told two years ago that he would need to buy quota from an existing producer and he
said the prices made that an impossible business proposition.
But Black takes a different tack, arguing there are
small-flock owners on Manitoulin Island and across Northern Ontario who are
denied any vote or voice on marketing board policies and programs.
Because they are left out by the CFO, he argues that the
commission ought to exempt them from marketing board controls.
If they are, however, to continue to be included under CFO
controls, then the commission needs to insist that the CFO include them in its
development of policies and programs.
Black complains that the small-flock chicken farmers can’t
even get into the annual general meeting of the chicken board.
He argues that the chicken board has failed in its
responsibilities to the public, especially the large segment of the population
deemed relatively poor.
He says that as the cost of production and chicken prices
have risen, so has the profit margin for producers. That, he argues, is not
fair to the public.
He recommends that Ontario marketplace be divided into three
categories – one for mega-farms, a second for smaller-scale operations and a
third for imports.
He says allocations from the national agency ought to be shared between the two local producer categories according to their
performance in meeting quality and food-safety standards.
In the event of a marketplace crisis, he says the category
for imports could be shut down first before production cuts are required and
imposed on the other categories.
A new general farm organization, Progressive Farmers of
Ontario, has also taken up the issue of CFO treatment of small-flock owners.
The proposals it presented to the CFO have been rejected by
the board of directors.
Sean McGivern, leader of that organization, has said
they plan to file an appeal with the Ontario Ministry of Agriculture and Food
Appeal Tribunal. So far no date for a hearing has shown up on the tribunal’s
website listing of appeal hearings.
