Minister's review was more than producer asked for

Monday, March 22, 2010

by BETTER FARMING STAFF  

Glencoe pork producer Rein Minnema and his agent, Elbert van Donkersgoed, wanted the Agriculture Minister Carol Mitchell to change the Farm Product Appeal Tribunal’s ruling on pork marketing. They got more than they expected.   

“We wanted a small review, not the whole thing . . . It creates some discomfort for us,” says van Donkersgoed, who represented Middlesex pork producer Rein Minnema, Glencoe, at a Tribunal hearing into pork marketing late last year.  

But he’s not going to take the blame for opening a can of worms. It’s in the minister’s powers to review a controversial Tribunal ruling, and van Donkersgoed says “she was already headed in this direction.” A comprehensive three page critique of the Tribunal’s mid-February decision released by agriculture ministry staff on Wednesday “was some weeks in the works.”

He concludes that the ministry’s staff doesn’t want organized pork marketing in the province. “I think we have to be concerned that there is some level of bias in the ministry about the existence of a marketing structure in pork.”

Van Donkersgoed supplied a copy of the letter he sent to the minister of agriculture March 15. The letter reads:  “We request that you vary the decision of the Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs Appeal Tribunal (Appeal Tribunal) in one very specific way while confirming both the legislative principles cited by the Appeal Tribunal and the mandate given to Ontario Pork to complete its strategic planning process and give all producers an opportunity to participate in the final decision.”  

Van Donkersgoed says the opposite has happened. The minister’s letter challenges the legal findings in the Farm Products appeal tribunal ruling, describing the Tribunal’s interpretation of the Farm Products marketing Act as “too narrow.”

On top of that, it’s now unclear if producers will get to vote on the future of their industry.  The Tribunal put the issue of pork marketing in the hands of producers to sort out over 18 months, Van Donkersgoed says, and that has now changed.

“We are not going to be looking for a consensus. Instead, everyone will be looking to put forward the best possible argument for their specific position” in their submissions to the minister April 14. BF