Perceived threat to supply management | Chicken Farmers of Canada concerned about meat from old birds
Last year would normally go into the record books as a great year for the Canadian chicken industry: production hit a record and prices were higher to cover feed costs.
However, producers and industry leaders were instead warning that unrestricted imports of meat from “spent fowl” in the United States threaten the future of the Canadian system, which depends on controlled imports to allow production controls and stable pricing.
Spent fowl is meat from old birds taken out of the laying and poultry cycles in the U.S
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Last year, 106 million kilograms of the meat came into Canada and captured 10 percent of the domestic market, which reduced production in the Canadian industry by tens of millions of dollars and perhaps more than $100 million.
Chicken Farmers of Canada is now trying to pinpoint the likely cost to present to government.
Imports increased 25 percent last year without any supply management import controls applying.
“We are facing an issue that threatens to destabilize the import control pillar of supply management,” CFC chair David Janzen from British Columbia told the organization’s recent annual meeting in Ottawa.
Agriculture minister Gerry Ritz said he was working on the problem but it is complex within the Canadian government. He said he could not promise when a solution would be announced.
Meanwhile, Canadian chicken producers, processors and feed suppliers are losing money because of the old bird imports that are often mixed with chicken in products such as chicken nuggets or even appear on Canadian store shelves as chicken products.
CFC argues that at a minimum, it should be labeled as U.S. spent fowl so that consumers can decide.
Janzen said in an interview the issue has been mired in Canadian government bureaucracy in jurisdictional disputes between Agriculture Canada, the foreign affairs and international trade department, the Canadian Food Inspection Agency and the Canadian Border Services Agency.
“It has taken far too long for government departments to recognize the problem and the size of the problem and once this gets rolling, it can be unstoppable,” he said.
“If it’s not chicken when it comes to our border, why is it chicken when it hits our grocery stores? There is a disconnect.”
There are controls on chicken imports under supply management, but spent fowl are exempt and some importers make a 51 to 49 spent fowl-broiler meat mix to create a product that is not controlled.
He also said some American chicken is clearly being shipped north as spent fowl to avoid the tariff rate quota restrictions.
“There is outright fraud,” said Janzen. “Based on trade statistics and our analysis, Canada is currently importing more spent fowl than is produced in the United States.”
He said the unrestricted imports are stealing the growth portion of the Canadian market from Canadian producers, “and we will likely see production cutbacks.”
Ritz said after the meeting that he understands the problem, but it is a complicated issue that takes time to resolve even as imports soar to claim 10 percent of the supposedly protected market.
