Nova Scotia egg producer Peter Clarke is the new chair of Egg Farmers of Canada, the first in 11 years.
He arrives just in time for some great news.
On March 23, agriculture minister Gerry Ritz confirmed that the federal government will increase the maximum compensation available for layers ordered destroyed under the Health of Animals Act.
Maximum compensation will increase to $30 for a layer hen from $8. The maximum for the chicken meat industry will be $20 per bird.
Ritz said the federal election will not affect the decision. It is a regulatory change that is insulated from political change, and the new compensation levels will soon be published for public comment.
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He has also promised to pay compensation as if the new rule was official, even if birds need to be destroyed before the regulation takes effect.
“This is tremendous news and a great stabilizer for the industry,” Clarke said in an interview. “The minister has been very supportive.”
Clarke was elected chair after eastern Ontario producer Laurent Souligny retired after 11 years March 23.
The new chair is a fourth generation farmer from the small community of Woodville in the Annapolis Valley. He runs a 750-acre farm with 32,000 layers with son, Jeff, and daughter-in-law, Kelly.
The farm produces 100,000 pullets a year and operates a feed mill.
He becomes the main national voice for the country’s more than 1,000 egg producers and takes over at a good time in the industry.
National quota allocation increased almost five percent last year in response to growing consumer demand.
“I really see opportunities for our industry and not too many downsides,” said Clarke.
“Eggs are increasingly being seen as a terrific source of protein and it increasingly is being recommended by doctors and dieticians as a healthy food and I think that message will get out more and more.”
As well, with increasing consumer concern about rising food prices, he said supply management’s cost-of-production and controlled-production system should prove its worth to consumers by producing for market demand and basing prices on input costs that avoid the sharp fluctuations of the marketplace.
“Of course, that price stability that we provide at the farmgate does not always get reflected in the supermarket shelf,” he said.
Clarke said the greatest potential threat to the system lies in the possibility, however remote it seems now, that a trade deal will be reached at world trade talks that would lower supply management tariff protections.
“We will have to continue to pay close attention to that file,” he said.
Souligny said the text now on the table in Geneva would devastate the industry.
We have to be careful not to take supply management for granted.”
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