For the third time in a year, poultry processors have filed
an appeal over chicken board policies related to serving specialty markets.
The Association of Ontario Chicken Processors twice filed
appeals and twice withdrew them at the last minute.
Now an appeal has been filed the Ontario Independent Poultry
Processors association. It represents small-volume processors who have been
unable to secure live chickens to meet market demand.
The Ontario Ministry of Agriculture and Food Appeal Tribunal
has set July 14 and 15 for public hearings.
The independent processors are frustrated after years of
trying to get chickens for their markets and angry about recent developments.
For example, Joe Abate of Abate Packers Ltd. at Arthur, said
he’s frustrated that he can’t get chickens to meet niche-market demand. He’s
also frustrated that the large-volume competitors, such as Maple Lodge Farms
Ltd. at Norval, move in to compete whenever small processors develop a
significant-volume market; most recently Maple Lodge has moved into Halal
slaughter for the Muslim community.
Abate said some niche markets involve so much work that the
large-volume processors aren’t interested, yet they continue to block all
attempts to get more chicken for small-scale processors.
Abate said that processing for the Red Bird market, for
example, is “very labour intensive and very slow” and takes his staff about
half a day to process the same number of birds that the large-volume packers
can process in a matter of minutes.
It was several years ago that the Ontario Farm Products
Marketing Commission appointed is vice-chairman, Elmer Buchanan, to head a
committee of five to address the issue.
That committee, made up of two people from the Chicken
Farmers of Ontario marketing board, two from the Association of Ontario Chicken
Processors (AOCP) and one from the Ontario Independent Poultry Processors
association, made recommendations that prompted the chicken board to adopt a
new regulation to deal with specialty markets.
But the marketing board has never put that regulation into
effect.
After the most recent withdrawal of the AOCP appeal, there
were hopes that the chicken board would go ahead to implement its policy. Last
year it had gone so far as inviting processors to submit applications and a
number of small-volume processors did.
But when the AOCP filed its appeal, they didn’t get the
chickens they sought and both they are their customers were frustrated.
This time the chicken board decided to approach the parent
Chicken Farmers of Canada marketing agency for the right to grow more chickens
to meet specialty-market demand.
If it can gain the right to grow more birds in Ontario, it
would not have to take from the large-volume processors to meet the demand from
small-volume companies serving niche markets.
What it got was a pittance – 287,000 kilograms and all of it
for Frey’s Hatchery’s dual purpose and Silky chickens to be processed by
Wellington Poultry.
That has infuriated some of the members of the Ontario
Independent Poultry Processors association who were left entirely out. They
believe that it’s the AOCP influence – the largest poultry processing companies
in Canada – who are frustrating their efforts to develop and serve niche
markets.
They also question why the Ontario marketing board is
allowing the national agency to dominate its response to requests for more
chickens to serve niche markets.
That sets the stage for an appeal tribunal hearing that
holds the potential to open a much broader set of concerns about how the
large-volume processors dominate the politics of chicken production and
marketing in Ontario, leaving the province consistently short of enough chicken
to satisfy demand, especially demand that would not add any profit for the
large processors.
Abate said an official from the Chicken Farmers of Ontario
marketing board is coming to visit him later this week.
There are rumours that all of the Frey Hatchery birds are
destined for two processors – Wellington Poultry of Arthur and ENS Poultry of
Elora, Abate said.
“I want to know what’s going on, and why,” Abate said.
