Pork board delays strategy details UPDATED

Tuesday, March 11, 2008

by MARY BAXTER

Many producers responded by criticizing the board for what they described as secretive behaviour and the exclusion of the organization’s senior staff from key strategic discussions.

“In the last 10 days, while we have determined a direction we were not able to come to a wording agreed with by everybody,” Curtiss Littlejohn, the board’s chair told those attending the meeting during his opening address.

Larry Skinner, a Perth County producer and a former board chair, was among the first to step to the microphones to air his objections.

Noting that he had come through the “worst six months” in his farm’s history, Skinner said he had come to the meeting to find out what the board was planning and working on only to learn little of substance in terms of these plans.

He criticized the board’s failure to include a report on accountability on the meeting’s agenda and said he found it “appalling” that the meeting’s councilors would not “have an opportunity to see and hear and debate, as they should, what is going on.”

Skinner also took the board to task for isolating senior staff from a serious decision-making process, noting it wasn’t fair to the organization and the producers.

Why the secrecy around the strategic plan? he asked, his comments garnering applause.

Later in the day Skinner put his concerns to a motion calling for the board to drop any discussions it may or may not be having concerning dismantling its marketing powers. The vote passed with 100 voting for and 70 voting against the motion. Also passed was a resolution demanding the board hold another meeting within 30 to 45 days of the annual meeting in order to come clean with what's on the table.

Littlejohn explained the board had only reached a conclusion about the direction the night before the meeting. As well, some of the information coming to the table contained proprietary information that could possibly hurt a company if it were to be released.

Wilma Jeffray, the board’s vice-chair, noted that reaching consensus around the board table had been a difficult and time-consuming process that had its fair share of disagreements. Requiring staff to sit in on the discussions would have been “a waste of their time,” she said.

Littlejohn also noted that producers had been consulted early on through surveys, open houses and invitations to submit feedback during the first phase of the strategic development process.

The board embarked on a study of the industry in 2006 after Maple Leaf announced it planned to sell or close its Burlington processing plant. The study drew on the perspectives of those affected as well as other experts to determine how to address the situation.

The field of options has been narrowed and it’s now time to choose a strategic vision, develop a business plan and consult one-on-one with producers, Jeffray said. At the end of that process, an industry plan will be generated that can be taken to government and the private sector in order to obtain support and buy-in.

During his opening remarks, Littlejohn hinted that the direction’s focus would be on Asian markets “as potential sources for export and a way to decouple ourselves from the north/south industry model.”

“We are confident that our research and findings will enable us to move forward with, or without, the Burlington plant,” Littlejohn said.

Littlejohn also observed that resolutions are not binding on the board. BF