Supply and demand gap in Ontario's chicken industry identified as concern

Tuesday, March 15, 2016

by SUSAN MANN

MISSISSAUGA—The gap between the Ontario-grown chicken supply and demand for product within the province is widening, participants at the Chicken Farmers of Ontario annual meeting were told last week.  

During a break in the meeting, Rob Dougans, president and CEO of Chicken Farmers of Ontario, said Ontario has 33 per cent of the production for all of Canada. Ontario also has 40 per cent of the country’s population and more than 60 per cent of its food processing industry.

“Our markets are larger and our industry base is larger than the production share that Ontario has,” he noted. A formula Chicken Farmers of Canada has used since 2014 to allocate production to provinces “helps but there’s still quite a gap,” he said. The formula accounts for factors such as market growth.

The allocation system assigns 45 per cent of the growth in the national chicken market to provinces based on market share. The remaining 55 per cent is assigned based on eight categories, called provincial comparative advantage factors, such as a province’s population growth and income-based Gross Domestic Product growth.

Dougans said, “we’ll continue to seek creative solutions” to the situation.

Chicken Farmers of Ontario representatives also told meeting participants about a number of new developments for the year, such as revisions to its market development program, incorporation of the updated National Poultry Code of Practice into the Chicken Farmers of Ontario Animal Care program, and euthanasia training for farmers this year.

As part of changes to the market development program, farmers producing organic chicken can now contract with processors one on one to service the export market. Farmers in the program can grow 25 per cent of their domestic quota holdings, up to a maximum of 50,000 kilograms of live chicken per allocation cycle, for the export market. There are six allocation cycles in a year.

The change is the first phase of alternations to the program. It’s designed to “help drive domestic economic growth by positioning the Ontario chicken industry to take advantage of new and emerging international markets,” according to the annual report released at the meeting.

Chicken Farmers is also planning to add changes to poultry care outlined in the new National Poultry Code of Practice (due out later this year) to its audit standards and program delivery for the animal care program.

As for euthanasia training, Chicken Farmers representatives helped to develop a guidance document outlining acceptable methods for euthanizing chickens. Farmers will be given euthanasia training this year to enable them to document their on-farm euthanasia plans. BF