The news service learned about the protests in response to
its application for Access to Information.
This is, of course, old news to veteran followers of this blog who were reading about it two years ago.
Most of the complaints were from people who want kosher
chicken and who were left in the lurch when Chai Kosher Poultry of Toronto sold
its chicken supplies to Sargent Farms which does not process kosher chicken.
That left Marvid Poultry of Montreal as the sole supplier of
kosher chicken from the Quebec and Ontario markets.
In response to the criticism, the Association of Ontario
Chicken Processors persuaded its members to give up enough chicken supply for a
processor to begin slaughter to meet the Ontario demand.
The process is, however, so expensive and protocols so
demanding that no investors willing to supply the volume required has offered
to get into the business.
The situation was quite different when CAMI International
Poultry Inc. of Welland was left short of chicken because the Ontario and
Quebec marketing boards and processors struck a deal to ban inter-provincial
trade in live chickens.
CAMI was the main source of Hong Kong dressed birds for the
Asian market in the Toronto area.
After one of the partners in that business threw in the
towel, the processors made a deal to supply CAMI with more birds.
The marketing board also managed to negotiate a deal with
the national supply-management agency to allow Ontario to produce
specialty-breed birds for this market.
Ironically, many of the birds are coming from farms that
were producing them without marketing board quota.
