Questions missed the deadline says Pullet Growers chair

Thursday, July 11, 2013

by SUSAN MANN

Pullet Growers of Canada chair Andy DeWeerd says they won’t answer a series of 25 questions posed by a Manitoulin Island small flock poultry farmer to do with the organization’s quest to obtain national marketing agency status.

DeWeerd says the farmer, Glenn Black, didn’t submit his questions during the public consultation process nor did he go to the hearings held by the Farm Products Council of Canada in the spring to ask them there.

Providing a response at this late date wouldn’t be appropriate, he says. “We would be overstepping our bounds” with the council, which is now assessing public feedback from the consultations.

Black couldn’t be reached for comment.

The Pullet Growers want the change in status to acquire the legal powers to represent and make decisions on behalf of members. Having a national marketing agency means pullet growers will have their own voice in the poultry industry. Pullets are the only part of the feather industry currently not under supply management.

The Farm Products Council held two days of public hearings this spring – one in Ottawa and one Winnipeg. People could have also provided written submissions through the council’s website.

On its website the council says the “sittings are now closed.” The council’s panel will evaluate all submitted and presented material and file a report with recommendations to the council’s board, which will then make a recommendation to federal Agriculture Minister Gerry Ritz.

The Pullet Growers never officially received Black’s questions, DeWeerd says. “We haven’t looked at them and we really don’t have any answers for him.”

Black is president of the Small Flock Poultry Farmers of Canada. In a June interview with BetterFarming.com he said the number of members in his organization is confidential.

He is currently working on launching a challenge to the Ontario Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs Appeal Tribunal of Chicken Farmers of Ontario’s policy. The policy limits the number of chickens people can raise quota free to 300 birds annually. He’s requesting it be increased to 2,000 birds annually. He’s also fighting for small flock poultry farmers to be able to offer self-inspected, farm-slaughtered poultry at the farm gate to willing consumers.

DeWeerd declined to answer Black’s questions posed by BetterFarming.com for this news story. “Those questions were to be asked to national farm products and to us and they never went there.”

He added that if “Mr. Black has a problem with us or has questions he should be contacting Pullet Growers of Canada and not doing it through the press and stuff like that. I don’t think that’s the proper way to answer these questions.”

But DeWeerd says he did see the questions himself after a pullet farmer forwarded him a copy. He still declined to answer them because they weren’t posed through the official public process. “He (Black) had the chance to go to the hearings to ask us the questions and he chose not to do that.”

The questions are on Black’s blog.

There are 550 pullet growers in Canada. Pullets are young chickens raised to become egg layers. BF