by SUSAN MANN
MISSISSAUGA—The Canadian government appears to be willing to crack down on fraudulent chicken imports, says a Chicken Farmers of Canada official.
Mike Dungate, Chicken Farmers of Canada executive director said one of the primary concerns is spent fowl (old laying hens) being imported from the United States and passed off as broiler chickens.
“We know, because of the volume coming in, it’s not all spent fowl,” Dungate said during a break in the Chicken Farmers of Ontario annual meeting Tuesday. “It’s broiler chicken grown in the United States.”
At the conclusion of the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP) negotiations last year, Canada’s former Conservative government announced it would implement measures to stem the flow of chicken imports that were avoiding tariff charges through either fraudulent means or legislative loopholes. Officials with Canada’s new Liberal government signed the wide-ranging trade agreement between 12 Pacific Rim countries in February but the deal has yet to be ratified in Parliament.
Dungate said talks between officials with his organization and government representatives indicate it’s likely the Liberal government will uphold the former government’s commitment to address the shady imports. Chicken Farmers of Canada representatives met with Agriculture and Agri-Food Minister Lawrence MacAulay and International Trade Minister Chrystia Freeland in December.
MacAulay couldn’t be reached for comment.
Canada’s supply management system includes import controls. The level of chicken imports that can come in duty free, if coming from the United States or other countries Canada has free trade agreements with, or with a 5.4 per cent duty for products from Brazil or Thailand, is based on the previous year’s production. Chicken Farmers of Canada manager of trade and policy Yves Ruel said in a telephone interview Canada’s duty free or low duty import level, also known as the tariff rate quota, was 80.2 million kilograms for 2015. For this year it’s 83.3 million kilograms.
Imports above that amount face a duty of 238 to 249 per cent depending on whether the product is a whole bird or chicken cuts. However, no one brings over-quota imports into Canada so “no one pays those tariffs,” he said.
Spent fowl imports in 2015, which come in as bone-in or boneless breasts, were 103 million kilograms, Ruel said. In 2012, there were 105.6 million kilograms of spent fowl imports, and they “represented 100 per cent of the United States’ slaughter volume,” Ruel said. In 2015, the spent fowl imports represented 96 per cent of the U.S. slaughter volume.
The problem of huge spent fowl imports has existed for several years. The spent fowl is used for further processed products, such as chicken wieners and nuggets. Ruel said those imports are legitimate. However, there also is mislabeling of product occurring.
“You can send boneless breast of chicken (into Canada) and it’s labeled as spent fowl,” Ruel said. The product crosses the border duty free and is sold in grocery stores labelled as chicken. “It’s just weird the product can change names after crossing the border.”
Customs officers don’t have the means to distinguish between spent fowl and broiler chicken. However, Trent University researchers have developed a DNA test that can distinguish between the two products, and Chicken Farmers of Canada wants the government to use that test.
Another area of concern is the duties relief program administered by Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA). It was designed for all goods and is mainly used for textiles or shipbuilding. Chicken imports under this program in 2015 were 96.3 million kilograms.
The program gives importers up to four years to re-export finished goods, Ruel said. “You can bring in steel, build a boat and re-export the steel in a value-added form as a boat.”
This program needs better controls, Ruel said. The program wasn’t designed for agricultural goods “but they could not refuse the applicants when the applicants started to go to CBSA and request to use the relief program.”
Chicken Farmers is also concerned about the loophole allowing chicken mixtures containing mostly chicken to be imported duty free. The importation program exempts chicken mixtures from duties as long as more than 13 per cent of the total package is made up of other ingredients. “It’s pretty crazy for a product with 87 per cent chicken or less, it would not be considered chicken” and be under import controls, he said.
Ruel said Chicken Farmers would like to see rules for those chicken mixture products tightened because companies aren’t bringing in a further-processed, finished product, such as chicken cordon bleu (chicken stuffed with cheese and ham). Instead, “it’s just putting two products in the box, and as long as the product sitting next to chicken weighs more than 13 per cent it can enter Canada duty free.”
Dungate said if government adopts measures to stop the fraudulent chicken imports the impact would offset the hit to the industry from the pledge under TPP to increase access to Canada’s chicken market.
The deal calls for Canada to provide access equal to 2.1 per cent of its annual chicken production. Coupled with the 7.5 per cent access Canada already provides as part of existing World Trade Organization and North American Free Trade Agreement deals, Canada’s access (once the TPP is fully implemented) will be about 9.6 per cent of its annual chicken production.
Dungate said during the meeting the additional access will result in an extra 26.7 million kilograms of chicken coming in duty free. “When you put that into the context of our industry, that is 61 farms we will lose,” he said. “There are $57 million in farm cash receipts on those farms annually.” BF
Comments
I don't see a single chicken farmer that is suffering so just how bad can it be !
If Canada would just do away with quotas there would be no problem . Canadian chicken farmers could sell their chickens in the USA also . We would see a lower price for chicken since the price/cost of quota would not be added .
Dungate studiously and dutifully "sings for his supper" by ignoring the obvious point that no chicken would need to enter Canada if Canadian chicken farmers weren't so intent on screwing consumers. More to the point, Dungate studiously and dutifully ignores:
(A) the obvious fact that these 61 farms would not be "lost" if Canadian chicken farmers faced up to the reality that they are charging too much money at the farm gate.
(B) that these 61 "lost" farms would be immediately replaced by at least 61 chicken farms willing to produce chicken for a price well-less than the "made in Canada" rip-off cost-of-production price.
(C) whatever is "lost" by farmers would be "found" by consumers and given the multiplier effect of consumer spending, the gains by the economy would be far-greater than what would be lost.
"Oh what a tangled web we weave when supply management tries to deceive"
Stephen Thompson, Clinton ON
You really think that wholesalers and retailers are going to lower prices to consumers if supply management was done away with? They would do this out of the goodness of their hearts? No. The prices would stay the same to consumers (or go up) and the farmers would get screwed. Just like what's happening to dairy farmers in New Zealand and Australia - look it up. They got rid of their supply management and now consumers pay MORE and the farmers are going bankrupt, so the profit can all be taken in by the multi-national wholesale and retail corporations. Yup, good thinking, like we don't have enough of that going on in Canada already.
Competition is good . What competition is there in Canada when you are only allowed to buy from a set market and set market price ? If the retail stores would be allowed to buy from other sources such as imports that have a cheaper cost then yes you would see lower prices because the stores would then be competing for customers to buy in their stores rather than just setting a one fits all profit price in all stores .
I guess you never shop price for your farm inputs or a new vehicle .
don't kid your self the prices won't change in the stores if supply management was gone. the grocery stores are all owned by one or two conglomerates who set the prices, kind of like supply management!!!!
The above argument is as old as the hills, and always fallacious because it eschews the use of what is called "a common denominator".
It's like this, when this sort of "analysis" is proffered, (and it is a stock-in-trade of the NFU) it always ignores any analysis of what would have happened to prices if, as in this case, supply management had been kept.
For example, while supply management advocates constantly fall all over themselves to point out that the retail price of milk may have increased in New Zealand and/or Australia after the end of supply management in those countries, they never explore by how much more the price would have increased if supply management had been kept.
Stephen Thompson, Clinton ON
if you read your last paragraph you admit that the price of milk is higher since supply management is gone. it is really a simple comparison price during supply management and price after. so simple it's mind boggling how you try to make it complicated. probably in new zealand and or australia the large conglomerate than own the grocery chain set the price in the stores where they want just like they will do here whether or not we have supply management
Just curious?How can you accurately prove that SM prices would be higher if SM is no longer available to make the comparison?
I don't have to prove anything except to point out that the people who claim that retail prices won't go down if/when supply management ends, are making a time series analysis using a different denominator on each side of the equation.
Therefore, while the claim that retail prices won't go down if supply management ends is simply conjecture without any economic modeling to justify it.
Furthermore, in any valid statistical model, there has to be a "control group" and the analytical methodology used by supply management supporters when claiming prices won't go down in the absence of supply management, doesn't have one.
One of the claims for amalgamation of the municipalities was that they claimed taxes would go down. Wish you luck with your conjecture.
Let's say there's a 25-year-old man with a high school education working in a factory making $40,000 per year and who decides to go to University to study engineering and when he graduates 4 years later, gets a job paying $150,000 annually.
If he'd stayed at his original job instead of going to University, he'd be making $50,000 by the time he graduated - therefore, to use the convoluted and twisted logic God seems to have inflicted on supply management supporters so that they can torment the rest of us, a University education in engineering triples one's salary.
However, what's missing in the equation is that during University, he met and married a lady whose father gave him the $150,000 job on graduation, a job which if held by anyone else, would pay only $100,00 per year.
Therefore, the tripling of this man's salary doesn't use a common denominator in the comparison because he was single at the start of the time period and married at the end.
If a common denominator was to be used, he'd be making $100,000 per year, thereby suggesting that his education doubled his salary, and that anything above $100,000 was not related to his education at all. This also makes any claim that education tripled his salary as ludicrous as claims by supply management supporters that the end of supply management wouldn't see any abatement in the price of dairy and poultry products.
This lack of a common denominator in time series comparisons creates exactly the sort of half-truths constantly foisted by supply management supporters, the NFU and everyone else who doesn't understand either basic economics or basic statistical analysis procedures.
Stephen Thompson, Clinton ON
The claim was that costs of the day would be lower which it likely was . The thing that you fail to see is that costs rise over time . Municipalities have had to add many more staff to deal with the down loading from the Province along with the added legal ramifications .
Taxes should be a reflection of the current not the past . With how Ag has been bullying the municipalities over the years , the bully now has to pay up with higher taxes . When you drive every one out or off of the side roads the only tax base left to collect from is the farm land .
Oh yeah how are the prices on that imported food these days? Chicken prices haven't gone up much at all the past couple of years but everything we import is going through the roof because of the loonie! Also the US gives their farmers billions of dollars every year so they can charge less for their chicken, is Canada going to start giving billions every year to the farmers so you can get cheaper chicken? I would rather pay the actual cost in the grocery store than a bunch in my taxes, at least in the store I get a choice of what to buy!
On Sm products , you do get a choice on what company or processor you get to support . You do not how ever get the choice of buying a quality ( and some times higher quality ) import product . There is absolutely nothing wrong with US beef , pork , milk or chicken to name a few . We are bound to a price that is not globally competitive under Supply Management . When our dollar was at par we did not see SM prices drop but we see them increase when our dollar goes down just like every thing else . Since SM is a closed loop system the dollar should not affect it .
Further with the SM closed loop system no one else can start into the production of those products because of production limits and the high cost of quota . We have a stagnant market that only grows with immigrants coming to live here that we have to many times support with our tax dollars . Agriculture is a production system that needs to keep growing not being limited . We are an export nation rich in resources and agriculture . We are supposed to be a free country . Does that not mean free to produce farm products for export ? No wonder some want the National Anthem changed .
Supply Management is designed for The Chicken Farmers. There is a Pricing Formula that guarantees Bottom Line Profit per Pound of Live Weight. The Chicken Farmers of Canada have the final say to how much Chicken they grow.
" How Sweet it is " Maximizing Profit with " No Risk ".
Plus speaking of Quota …. The Production of Live Birds is controlled by Growing Quota which restricts New Farmers from getting into the Growing Business.
Mike Dungate represents a Subjective viewpoint of the Chicken Farmers who sign his pay check.
Over all The strength of a Country is measured by its ability to feel itself. Canada needs Chicken Farmers. There needs a modification of the system to benefit the Consumer.
David Rice
Toronto
When one Googles "the strength of a country is the ability to feed itself", the second "link", published by Calvin College, is titled "Rural propaganda" and deals with the way the Nazis used this slogan to unite rural Germany behind the party.
In addition, the phrase quickly comes up again in reference to Maoist beliefs in Communist China.
Therefore, while the slogan "the strength of a country is the ability to feed itself" seems to always be popular along the rural routes and among protectionists and those who, like the Nazis and Chairman Mao, (and even our own NDP and/or NFU) used it for blatantly-political purposes, it is, and always has been, an economic fallacy and rural propaganda, and is especially so in northern-Hemisphere countries like Canada, England, North Korea and Japan.
Therefore, while I agree with Mr. Rice's belief that supply management shortchanges Canadian consumers, the phrase "feed itself" needs to be changed to "feed its citizens" because in that way, the shackles of protectionism can be lifted to allow trading systems and mechanisms, including the principle of comparative advantage, to be better able to feed the country's citizens than by relying on the sort of protectionist-isolationism enshrined in supply management.
Stephen Thompson, Clinton ON
In my above posting, I had meant to cite South Korea instead of North Korea, but, in hindsight, I realize that North Korea is THE definitive example of why the slogan "the strength of a country is the ability to feed itself" is just-plain wrong.
Stephen Thompson, Clinton ON
Mr. Dungate carries the party line quite well, blaming everybody else except Chicken Farmers and the Supply Management System.
In Ontario, chicken farmers were given the mandate to control price, quota, growing, processing, advertising, marketing, shipping, storage, buying, selling, distribution, etc. for chicken.
The other Local Boards in the other provinces have similar powers.
To have been granted these powers and to be unwilling and/or unable to exercise them is clearly abdication, negligence, or incompetence.
CBSA are authorized to enforce both provincial and federal laws.
Stop your whining, Mr. Dungate. Pass a Chicken By-law, and get it enforced by your Chicken Police.
If CFC, CFO, and others have the power and authority over spent fowl, why don't they exercise it?
We must remember that these Boards are controlled by chicken farmers, and those farmers have many friends.
I'm curious to learn what percent of the "spent chicken" is imported by SM insiders, or for their benefit?
When the stink of corruption becomes unbearable, change will occur; not before.
Glenn Black
Small Flock Poultry Farmers of Canada
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