The regulated national egg marketing and production system has approved its first-ever export policy.
Manitoba, with the first allotment of a 100,000-bird export quota for the remainder of 1998, was the first benefactor.
Manitoba Egg Producers have requested export quota for at least another 100,000 birds.
“That will be dealt with at a November CEMA board meeting that makes plans for 1999,” said Canadian Egg Marketing Agency first vice-chair Laurent Souligny, from Ste. Isadore, Que.
In Manitoba, where there has been a year-long struggle with CEMA to approve over-quota egg production for products destined for export, the decision at the Ottawa CEMA board meeting last week was hailed as a victory.
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Penny Kelly, general manager of Manitoba Egg Producers, said the provincial push for export quota was directly responsible for the decision by the national agency to create an export policy.
She said the province’s more ambitious export goals should be realized next year.
She called the new export policy introduced earlier this month a step in the right direction.
“Manitoba’s proposal meets the CEMA rules, which are based on our proposal. So I am very confident our application for the full 200,000 plus, if there is a need for it, will be favorably considered.”
She said the extra 100,000 layer quota is all the province’s farmers can accommodate this year anyway.
In Manitoba, a group of producers banded together, combined their quotas and built a barn capable of housing 150,000 birds. However, existing quota rules would not allow them to produce that many.
The new rules will accommodate them, along with some others interested in producing for lower-priced export markets.
CEMA decided to become the latest supply management agency to embrace an export policy after growing pressure from provincial boards to approve additional quota to produce eggs needed by processors aiming at export.
“We decided to have a policy to produce some of these eggs within the national framework but not interfere with the present system and the existing industrial product program we have,” said Souligny.
To accomplish that, the CEMA board decided to limit expanded export quota to five percent of the existing 18-million-bird quota – less than one million new birds.
Proposals for the new quota must come through provincial boards and must involve existing producers with signed delivery contracts that guarantee the new production will not leak into the domestic table or industrial egg systems.
“We need some control over the product,” said Souligny.
He said the CEMA board in November will consider applications for export over-quota from Manitoba, British Columbia and Ontario.
Meanwhile, CEMA also has approved an expanded over-quota industrial product allotment for next year of 430,000 birds – 320,000 layers for the East and 110,000 for the western four provinces.
These birds will produce eggs for the expanding domestic processing industry, which traditionally has relied on surplus from the more lucrative consumer table market.
The expanded domestic processing quota includes a one-cent-per-dozen increase in the buy-back handling fee paid by CEMA to graders unable to sell all their eggs.
The CEMA buy-back price will be cost-of-production plus three cents.
The difference in the handling charge between the CEMA rate and the real rate will be met through provincial levies.
