Organic growers need support to be able to continue to produce better
quality foods.
jean-claude

>Canada Threatens To Fine Organic Farmers!
>By Nicholas Read 4-3-1
>
>http://www.vancouversun.com
>
>Producers of free-range and organic eggs, chickens and turkeys say
>provincial marketing boards are trying to drive them out of business.
>
>Fred Reid, his brother Brad, and Shelley and Leo Deschamp have all
>received
>notice in recent weeks that marketing boards will no longer tolerate them
>producing food outside the marketing board system. And unless they stop,
>they're told, they will suffer fines or closure.
>
>Fred Reid produces about 215,000 organic eggs each year from 18,000
>free-range chickens on five farms in the Fraser Valley.
>
>On the farm where he lives, he also grows raspberries, spinach,
>hazelnuts,
>broccoli and tomatoes, all of it without pesticides or chemicals.
>
>"It's biodiversity," he explains. "It really does work."
>
>(He also used to raise spinach, but he had to give that up because the
>chickens ate it all.)
>
>Last year, after nearly 10 years of trials and errors -- errors that cost
>him
>more than $100,000 -- he finally turned a profit. He is one of the
>largest
>organic egg producers in the province, selling his eggs at Capers,
>Choices,
>Stongs, Save-On Foods, and Thriftys on Vancouver Island.
>
>Now, he says, after a decade of alternately laughing at him and ignoring
>him,
>the B.C. Egg Marketing Board is trying to control him by making him
>acquire
>an egg quota. And if he fails to do so, it could shut him down.
>
>Essentially a quota is a licence to produce an agricultural product.
>Marketing boards, which control the production, transport, packing,
>storing
>and marketing of said products, only allow so much of that product to be
>produced each year as a way of keeping farmers in business.
>
>The trouble with those boards, says Reid, is that when farmers like him
>come
>along -- farmers who are trying to produce a product in a different way
>according to different standards -- there is no way for them to fit in.
>
>That's why, he says, the board sent him a letter last month advising him
>that
>he suddenly owes them $74,000 in unpaid dues. And if he refuses to pay
>them,
>he could be fined an additional $20,000.
>
>This makes him furious for a lot of reasons. When he started out growing
>organic eggs and produce, the marketing board wanted nothing to do with
>him
>or niche farmers like him.
>
>"They laughed at us," he says in an interview around his kitchen table.
>"And
>they didn't do anything for us."
>
>Thus, it was up to him and other organic farmers to develop the organic
>industry on their own. They developed the necessary infrastructure, found
>processing plants, developed certification procedures and cultivated
>markets.
>
>And they did all of it without a penny of industry support, he says.
>
>However, now that organic products are becoming mainstream, and
>conventional
>farmers are feeling threatened by them, Reid says marketing boards -- the
>very institutions that were established to protect farmers -- are trying
>both
>to control and punish him.
>
>"According to [the board], an egg is an egg is an egg," he says angrily.
>"They refuse to understand that what I'm doing is different."
>
>By that, he means his birds are free range. They are allowed to go
>outside,
>peck and preen and generally conduct themselves as nature intended. By
>contrast, most eggs are produced in battery systems where hens are kept
>four
>to five birds in a cage in such a way that they can't even turn around.
>
>Reid's birds also aren't given feed with animal byproducts in it, and
>aren't
>treated with chemicals or antibiotics.
>
>That's why, he says, his customers buy his eggs, and why they're prepared
>to
>pay almost twice as much for them as they would for conventional eggs.
>
>But if Reid were to buy a quota and give in to board dictates, he says,
>at
>least 50 cents of every dozen eggs customers buy would go towards
>supporting
>battery-system production through board subsidies.
>
>And he does not want that to happen.
>
>"They [the board] have no idea of the commitment, the philosophy,
>anything!
>They don't understand that this isn't just a way of making money, that
>it's a
>way of life."
>
>B.C. Egg Producers general manager Peter Whitlock says all the board is
>attempting to do is ensure that all egg producers in the province are
>part of
>the same system -- a system he says exists to protect the consumer.
>
>In fact, he says that Reid's farm is not inspected to the same standards
>that
>conventional farms are.
>
>Linda Edwards, president of the Certified Organic Associations of British
>Columbia (COABC), takes great offence at this, insisting that all organic
>farmers of any significant size -- and she includes Reid among them --
>are
>subject not only to Canadian Food Inspection Agency inspections, but to
>COABC
>inspections as well.
>
>"I don't know why [Whitlock] would say that," she says.
>
>Whitlock also claims that because Reid's farm is so large compared to
>other
>organic farms, he undercutting other organic egg producers and selling
>his
>eggs at an artificially low price.
>
>Whitlock is also offended by suggestions that birds kept in battery cages
>are
>ill-treated compared to free-range birds.
>
>"The situation is that those birds are kept in a controlled environment
>and
>producing eggs like mad," he says. "So the birds must be happy."
>
>Whitlock says subsidies paid to egg farmers are simply there to ensure
>that
>an egg industry continues to exist in Canada.
>
>"We just want to ensure that consumers have a choice," Whitlock says.
>
>That is certainly news to Leo and Shelley Deschamp, whose free-range
>Yarrow
>turkey farm has been shut down by the B.C. Turkey Marketing Board.
>
>Until the board closed their operation earlier this month, all they
>wanted to
>do was provide customers with the opportunity to choose humanely raised,
>organically fed birds. Theirs was a family-run operation that raised 300
>to
>400 free-range birds a year, which they then sold to specialist customers
>for
>$6 a pound.
>
>Like Reid's chickens, the Deschamps' turkeys were allowed a semblance of
>a
>natural life. They went outside, enjoyed natural light and exercise.
>
>But the board says that because the Deschamps don't own a turkey quota,
>their
>farm was illegal, and that in future they will be permitted to raise no
>more
>than 25 birds a year.
>
>In fact, hatcheries that used to sell turkey chicks to the Deschamps have
>been ordered by the board to stop.
>
>The Deschamps says their story is not dissimilar from Reid's. When they
>started their operation 11 years ago, they were ignored or laughed at by
>the
>turkey board, and received no help from it when they tried to establish
>an
>organic turkey market. Unlike Reid, they tried several times to purchase
>a
>quota, only to be told that they didn't want enough birds to merit one.
>
>"So we decided that if we couldn't buy one, we'd raise birds without
>one,"
>Leo says.
>
>That proved to be their undoing. After years of raising birds on their
>six
>acres of ground, they received a letter from the board on March 19
>ordering
>them "to cease and desist immediately the growing of more than 25 turkeys
>a
>year."
>
>Board manager Colyn Welsh wouldn't make any comments to The Sun about the
>Deschamps until he first arranged to have the conversation recorded on
>tape.
>
>He then said that what the Deschamps were doing was illegal, adding that
>the
>fact that they've been doing it for so many years without board
>interference
>makes no difference.
>
>"That does not make it legal," he said.
>
>He said the industry requires that all farmers raising more than 25 birds
>a
>year hold a quota, and that the Deschamps were in violation of that
>regulation.
>
>He also said that "if an article comes out in the newspaper about this,
>it
>will not help [Mr. Deschamp's] case."
>
>Both Reid and the Deschamps say the fuss is all about a conventional
>industry
>feeling threatened by a different way of raising and treating animals and
>the
>land they're raised on. After being ridiculed for 10 years, organic
>farmers
>have finally established a market niche, they say. It's still a tiny
>niche --
>only about one per cent for eggs and much less for meat -- but a niche
>nonetheless, and that makes the industry worry.
>
>Reid's brother, Brad, raises organic chickens for meat. He, too, says he
>has
>been harassed by marketing boards. He finds it more and more difficult to
>obtain chicks from hatcheries. He has been told that the birds he now has
>may
>be seized at any time, and because of the precariousness of his
>situation, he
>says banks are reluctant to deal with him.
>
>"What amazes me," wrote Fred in a letter to B.C. Premier Ujjal Dosanjh,
>"is
>that I have to defend my right to farm organically against the
>conventional
>industry that has made a few farmers very rich and has shown little
>interest
>in the concerns of the organic market.
>
>"In Canada and B.C., the organic farmers that pioneered the organic
>movement
>are left to defend themselves against a much more economically powerful
>foe
>that is supported by out-dated government legislation and has shown no
>interest in the organic movement except to squash it."