Mixed reaction to TPP from Canada’s chicken producers

Industry association Chicken Farmers of Canada has expressed its disappointment at the additional access that Canada has had to concede to secure a Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) agreement, while it recognized that the agreement will benefit the overall Canadian economy.
As a result of the TPP agreement, Canada will be required to increase its market share for chicken by 28 percent to almost 10 percent of national consumption. The association hopes that, given this additional access, the government will end the practice of regularly issuing supplementary import allocations.
However, association chair Dave Janzen commented that the key part of the agreement was the government’s commitment to immediately end fraudulent import practices that have plagued the country’s industry for more than five years.
He welcomed the announcement that the government will put in place long term, meaningful fixes to end current practices that have cost the chicken industry “thousands of jobs, millions of kilograms of production, millions of dollars in revenues, and millions of dollars in GDP contributions to the Canadian economy”.
The agreement, when combined with these long-term fixes to re-establish the integrity of the import control pillar for chicken, will provide the chicken sector with a “generation of stability and certainty.”
“While we were unable to prevent important concessions on top of the substantial market access that Canada already provides to its chicken market, we appreciate the steadfast efforts of International Trade Minister (Ed) Fast and Canada’s negotiators to blunt the irresponsible access demands of some key TPP members,” he continued.
Among fraudulent practices highlighted by the association are the import of unlimited quantities of chicken by simply adding sauce or other ingredients, importing spent fowl and declaring it as chicken, and allowing companies to substitute high-value imported cuts with low-value domestic cuts for re-export.