-Caveat Lector- 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. 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