Revolt is Spreading

The revolt against the #ChickenMafia and #EggMafia is spreading.

Aaron Hiltz, free range egg farmer in Nova Scotia Canada
who defies the #EggMafia rules.  Image from CBC

First, there was Sean McGivern who informed CFO that he wasn't going to play by CFO's Kangeroo Court rules any more.

Now, there is Aaron Hiltz in Lake George, Kings County, Nova Scotia who is defying the Nova Scotia Egg Producers.

Map showing red arrow for Lake George, King County
Nova Scotia Canada, site of the latest revolt against
Canada's #EggMafia.  Click for larger map

Aaron has the courage to put 700 layers on his green grass pasture for free-run specialty eggs to supply his customers.  The Nova Scotia Don of the #EggMafia ( Nova Scotia Egg Producers) only permits 100 chickens per farm under their arcane rules.  These rules, made up by the #EggMafia are essential to protect the #EggMafia's monopoly for eggs.

Aaron asked for an exemption, but the #EggMafia refused.

CBC Television has done an interview on Aaron here.

The Chronicle Herald newspaper in Halifax NS, has done 10 articles about Aaron so far.

There is also a petition with 1,228 signatures in favour of Aaron and all others like him, asking the NS government to remove the quota systems so young farmers can farm.

Not yet, but soon, the governments across Canada will sense that there has been a sea change, and the old monopolies of Supply Management are no longer welcome, no longer appreciated, and will no longer be tolerated by the people.

The #EggMafia may crush Aaron for being one of the fist to stand up and defy their false authority, but there will be more who will follow in Aaron's footsteps.

More and more will be crushed by this Frankenstein machinery created by the government for the benefit of the #EggMafia, but eventually the gears will become jammed by the bones of people like Aaron, and it will suddenly stop turning, and then we will be free.

Honourable Leo A. Glavine, Nova Scotia's Minister of Health and Wellness is Aaron's MLA for the riding of Kings West for the Nova Scotia Provincial Legislature.  In support of Aaron, I sent Minister Glavine an email, outlining SFPFC's position and recommendations on how best to approach this difficult situation for the greater good of the people of Nova Scotia, Aaron, and the Egg Mafia.  I also copied a few thousand friends and acquaintances of Small Flockers in that email to Minister Glavine, as I'm sure they want to be kept in the loop.

2013/11/14 Addendum:  Friends and customers of Aaron have started a petition of support for Aaron.  Please consider signing it.  Aaron and his plight must be pretty important, as he has more signatures in a month than what I've collected for SFPFC in 8 months.  I hope he shares his petition secrets with us.

2014/10/14 Update:    Aaron plead guilty in Court and was fined $1,500.00

CBC News said:

"He doesn’t regret challenging the system.

“I felt like I was doing what was right trying to supply for my family and producing a product that was needed in the marketplace,” he [Aaron Hiltz] said.

Hiltz plans to move away from production and toward processing free-range eggs for other farmers.

Crowd Funding was started on the Internet to help Aaron pay his fine, and had already raised $1,000.00

The stress of Court for someone with a young family and a farm to run isn't easy.  I assume Aaron decided to take the easier, short term path (ie. plead guilty), rather than going down with the ship as a martyr (fighting on, distracted by the Court case so much that he ends up losing the farm due to neglect, &/or the cost of lawyers).  I trust that decision is one most people would choose under those circumstances.

Things have to be truly intolerable to suffer totally, sacrificing yourself for a cause.  We aren't quite there yet, but we are getting closer every day.  Soon, the circumstances will force other decisions to be made.

Root Cause of Factory Food

Source:  Surrey BC Backyard Chickens & CLUCK Surrey

This image speaks for itself.

EatLocalGrown, the original source of the image, was started shortly after Rick D. read the book The Omnivore's Dilemma.  You can read Rick D's story here.

The problem today is that the legal definition of "organic" has been highjacked and watered down by Big Food.

In Canada, we have a second problem.  CFIA changed the definition of "Local Food" so that it means it was grown somewhere in your Province, plus the first 50 km. of all other Provinces around you.  Canadian Provinces are BIG places, bigger than some countries.  Food grown in Windsor ON isn't too local to somebody living on the James Bay coast of Far Northern Ontario.  Not too local, if you ask me.

EatLocalGrown is out of Boston MA.  Here is a map of everybody they have signed up to be a local food producer (green square with the white carrot).  Impressive.  Bostonians might not starve after all.

EatLocalGrown and their Local Food suppliers near Boston MA, USA

Now the Ontario Government is passing the Local Food Act to enshrine that definition.  That will enable, and the #ChickenMafia and #EggMafia are already lined up and promoting themselves, the entire Supply Management System to be defined as "Local Food Producers".

So you see, that eliminates the distinction between your friendly neighbourhood Small Flocker, vs. the mega food factory over 1,000 km away.  No difference, says the government.

Again, I'm not sure what a chicken or an egg raised in Southern Ontario, then shipped over 1,000 km to my local store has anything to do with "Local Food"

But alas, it's not me who gets to make those decisions.  I submitted Small Flockers' comments to Ontario's Government, the NDP Opposition, and our local MPP back on April 14, 2013.  The Act is 6 pages long, and we had multiple comments on every page (the comments are in the little yellow splotches on the Adobe Acrobat page, click on them and you can read the comment in the context of the Act).

We asked to come to testify at the Legislature's Sub-Committee who was holding about 6 hours of hearings on the Local Food Act, but we were denied the privilege. We did however, re-submit our comments to the Sub-Committee.

It seems all of it was sucked into a Black Hole, never to be seen or heard from again.

Perhaps you need to read the book, or watch the documentary Food Inc.  (see yesterday's Blog Posting ), or like John D. says, get really pissed off.

A Tale of Two Opinions

#ChickenMafia are alive and well, spewing their propaganda everywhere.  When a survey was done by Forum Research, Dave Janzen who is Chairman of the Chicken Farmers of Canada went on the attack.

Dave has a paid subscription to iPolitics, so he gets a nice platform from which to release his indoctrination efforts as a guest article.  It is well written, like most propaganda, and therefore seems plausible, and can easily mislead the public; just as intended.

Small Flockers alternative voice is weak, but clear.  We are only allowed to speak from the corner of the room.  However we will not be silent.  We will persevere.

Our reasoned response to the #ChickenMafia is in yesterday's Blog posting

Survey Says...

While Canadians want to support Canadian farmers, support for paying more for dairy and chicken is weakly affirmative.  Overall, Canadians aren't totally thrilled with Free Trade, in spite of decades of experience under various trade agreements.  Perhaps too many have lost jobs to Mexico and China, and the weak economy scares them more.

Forum Research Survey Results as reported by Canadian Business magazine
CB Magazine has a skewed interpretation, as described below

A telephone survey of 1,238 Canadians was conducted by Forum Research on May 27-28, 2013.  The results are in the graphs to the right, as reported by Canadian Business Magazine.  The caption in the graph proposes a skewed interpretation of the survey results, likely in support of their friends in the #ChickenMafia who place many ads in their magazine.

Let's analyze the data, and see if we can prove the bias of the survey and Canadian Business Magazine.

Table 1:   Raw Survey Data

While I love digging into statistics like this, most people quickly fall asleep, or their vision soon blurs.  I have therefore done the analysis for you, to make it easier.

The first step was to convert the pretty pictures to a table of numbers, as shown in the next table.

Table 2:  Adjusted survey data to re-distribute "Don't Know" respondents

Second step is to eliminate those who "Don't Know".  In surveys, it's typical to distribute these lost souls into the other categories in the same proportion as they enjoy without the Don't Knows.  That adjusted data is shown in Table 2.

Next, we need to simplify the data, reducing all the 4 degrees of agreement into one aggregate % Agreement.


Survey Like Our Senses

The senses (eg. hearing, taste, sight, touch, smell, etc.) work on a logarithmic scale, not linear.  If we extend this to emotions, then "Strongly Agree" isn't twice as much agreement as "Agree", it's likely 10 times more agreement.  We also assume that Agree and Disagree are equally separated and balanced about the point of indifference between them.  To combine all answers together, we weighted "Agree Strongly" as +100 and "Agree" as +10 and "Disagree" as -10 and "Strongly Agree" as -100.


Test Data in Table 3
To show you that this isn't a mathematical trick, Table 3 shows some dummy data as a test and example that uses this same scoring system for an assumption of 100 people surveyed with 6 questions.

Table 3: Dummy data to show proposed weighting
system is consistent and useful.

For Question #1 ("Q1"), 100 people answered and all of them said "Strongly Disagree".  Our proposed scoring system weights calculates 0.00% Agreement.  Makes sense so far.

For Q2, we have 100% "Strongly Agree", and get 100% Agreement.  OK!

For Q3, it's evenly split between all 4 answers, and our weighted answer calculate out to 50%.  OK again!

Q4 shows 100% saying "Disagree", for a weighted score of 45%.  Remember, neutrality is located in between "Agree" and "Disagree", and would be the 50% point.  That is why Q3 scores 45%.

For same reasons, Q5 with 100% answering "Agree" gets a weighted score of 55%.

In Q6, there is a heavy leaning towards Agree, each category about double the responses of the former category, but it's far from unanimous.  We calculate an 80.5% agreement.  Note that adding "Strongly Agree" responses to "Agree" responses for Q6 gets us a total of 85% of the respondents, but our %Agree score is just 80.5%.  That is the non-linear effects in the weighting system at work.

Analysis of Our Survey Data
Now that we have confirmed our proposed weighting system works, let's apply it to our real survey data, with the results in Table 4.

Table 4:  Weighted Survey Data Results

This survey is mainly about Free Trade, and whether we should protect some of our domestic industries such as chicken, dairy, telecom, banking, and airlines.  Now that we have done the preparatory work, let's see what the survey results say.

From Question #1, two thirds of Canadians support the concept of trade agreements, which I thing means they support Free Trade.

From Question #2, 81.54% want to protect Canada's dairy and poultry sectors, in spite of EU's objections that this is unfair trade barriers.  Wow!  That's the strongest response in the whole survey.  That farming sector has the Canadian public in the hip pocket of every farmer's coveralls.

However, let's look a little closer into the wording of the Q2 question, the assumption contained inside the question, and the psyche of the Canadian public.

As a parent, I have watched as my two kids fought like cats and dogs, then 5 minutes later they're having fun together.  On one occasion, they were fighting about something, then a friend of one of them stuck their nose into the argument, trying to support their friend against their sibling.  The two of them both turned simultaneously like wolverines, and attacked the friend butting in as a team of two.  To them, it was all right to attack each other, but nobody else, especially not an outsider could attack a fellow family member and get away with it.

Now let's apply that "family" scenario to the response in Question #2.  We're all Canadians, but it's the EU complaining about fellow Canadians and a Canadian industry.  Do we stand together in solidarity?  You betcha!  No wonder Q2 got such a strong response.  To me, this question is biased, and the one sided survey results show it.  The Q2 question is improperly worded.  The survey people asked a loaded question, so they got a loaded answer.  This Q2 question therefore creates propaganda fodder due to its underlying assumptions.  Hindsight and a separate pair of eyes works wonders after the fact.

For Question #3, it's a far weaker response from Canadians.  Look out banksters!  You and those cell phone companies who charge crazy cell phone bills, costing us an arm & a leg are in trouble.  No wonder the Federal Government have these two industries in their gun sights, as evidenced in the most recent Throne Speech.

For Question #4, we have the weakest answer of all 5 questions in the survey.  Only 58% of Canadians are willing to pay higher prices to protect and support the Canadian dairy and poultry industries and Supply Management ("SM") in general.  Look out SM, your Achilles' Heal is showing!  However, the wording of the question again is loaded and biased.  Note that the verb used is "would be willing", which is the conditional present form of the verb "willing", meaning it's an open hypothetical.  Time and again, people will generally agree in surveys to open hypotheticals, then choke at the subsequent moment of truth.  Many businesses lose fortunes when they launch a new product or service based on open hypotheticals, and the customers never come to buy.  I believe it's the same here.  Secondly, how many people realize they are already paying 300% more for chicken, and 38% more for dairy?  Most people are shocked when I share that factoid with them.  They knew it was more in Canada, but are totally shocked by the true magnitude of the difference.  The survey misleads people in this area, and is therefore a biased survey.  The results to that question cannot be trusted.

For Question #5, it is a generic Free Trade question, and it has the highest "Unknown" category.  For this reason alone, the answer is far less trustworthy.  Most people want to seem intelligent, involved, and aware. Answering "I don't know" is often a difficult place to go.  All surveys need to be treated with caution when the "Don't Know" gets above 10%; which is true in this case with a survey score of 22% "Don't Know".

Are Canadians Free Traders ?
I have proposed that 3 of the 5 questions are worded as pro-Free Trade (Q# 1, 3, and 5), and two are worded as against Free Trade (Q# 2, and 4).  Positive and negative wording of questions is a standard technique used in surveys, so this is good to see.

When we add all of the questions up on the Free Trade issue, we get an aggregate average of 49.37% in favour of Free Trade.  As 50% would be a neutral outcome (ie. neither for or against Free Trade), I suggest this survey outcome at 49.37% is too close to call; a hung jury.  With survey results like that, most wise politicians will stall until a clear majority appears, then the politicians will jump out in front of the trend, and lead them the last few steps.

Note that Canada got the Auto Pact in 1965 (ie. 48 years ago), and NAFTA in 1989.  Both of these trade deals had significant positive effects on Canada's economy, deepening and broadening it in most sectors.  Overall, Canada's trade with the US increased by 22% in the first 3 years of NAFTA.  In 1992, a Canadian Chamber of Commerce survey said most businesses were pleased with the results.

Not so much support for Free Trade in Canada any more.  I wonder why?  Perhaps it's the ongoing weakness in the economy and the recent job loss. Ontario was hurt the worst, and sure enough, Forum Research states that Ontario had significantly more negative outcomes in survey results.

Conclusions
Whether Canadians are in love with Free Trade, or now hate it, no Canadian likes being abused by the #ChickenMafia.

I suggest that the #ChickenMafia will redouble their propaganda and obfuscation smoke screen systems to keep Canadians in the dark about how much cheaper chicken is outside Canada.  This redoubling of effort by the #ChickenMafia will merely delay the ultimate outcome.  Once it is generally know how badly the #ChickenMafia is continually screwing the public, there will be hell to pay.

For us Small Flockers, we need to focus on communicating the consequences for Canadians caused by the continual price gouging by the #ChickenMafia and get the word out to everyone as soon as possible.  That's the Achilles' Heal of the #ChickenMafia as we learn from this survey.

Let's see in the long run who wins.  It's hard to hide the truth forever.  Eventually, we will win.  It's only a matter of time.

Special Interests

How did the #ChickenMafia get so engrained into our society; so intrusive that many feel it is an inoperable tumor?

“While every group has certain economic interests identical with those of all groups, every group has also, as we shall see, interests antagonistic to those of all other groups. While certain public policies would in the long run benefit everybody, other policies would benefit one group only at the expense of all other groups. The group that would benefit by such policies, having such a direct interest in them, will argue for them plausibly and persistently. It will hire the best buyable minds to devote their whole time to presenting its case. And it will finally either convince the general public that its case is sound, or so befuddle it that clear thinking on the subject becomes next to impossible.

In addition to these endless pleadings of self-interest, there is a second main factor that spawns new economic fallacies every day. This is the persistent tendency of man to see only the immediate effects of a given policy, or its effects only on a special group, and to neglect to inquire what the long-run effects of that policy will be not only on that special group but on all groups. It is the fallacy of overlooking secondary consequences.”

Henry Hazlitt (1894 - 1993)

Economist, philosopher, journalist and Author (Economics in one Lesson)

That pretty well sums up how Supply Management came into being, and why it's still here.

However, we can't blame it all on the #ChickenMafia and #EggMafia.

These special interest groups can only survive when a vast majority of the public practices ignorance.  It doesn't matter how the ignorance arises, whether by focusing on other issues, jaded attitudes, abdication of responsibility, or stupidity.  The end result is the same.

We all need to wake up and smell the coffee, to inquire, to question, to do some critical thinking.  Remember, they aren't above using our public money to bribe every one of us.  That means we will also need character to resist the bribes and requests for special favours.

I realize all of this is a tall order, but we have to start somewhere, or we are eternally doomed.

Perhaps Ontario's newest proposal for #OpenON will help shine some sunlight upon the situation; not only on Supply Management, but all government waste and policy errors.  If people can see the problem, perhaps they won't be so jaded or apathetic.

Chicken Factory

Food Inc. is a 2008 American documentary film directed by Emmy Award-winning filmmaker Robert Kenner.  The film examines corporate farming in the United States, concluding that agribusiness produces food that is unhealthy, in a way that is environmentally harmful and abusive of both animals and employees.

The above video clip from Food Inc. is for chickens.

It is recommended to see the whole documentary.  For critical reviews, see Top Documentaries or PBS.org

To watch the full documentary, try Netflicks

To buy the movie, it's $17.99 from PBS   Invite your family and friends over, watch it, and discuss it.  Better yet, rent your local community hall and invite the whole neighbourhood.

How is chicken farming different for Small Flockers?

Read SFPFC's Principles or download an Adobe Acrobat pdf version of SFPFC's Principles, ready to print off.

Small Flockers need to be humble.  Small Flockers are far from perfect.  However, I believe Small Flockers are guided by reasonable and effective principles.  With these Principles, we need to practice them to perfection.

Unfortunately, it seems that the #ChickenMafia are not only arrogant, they have lousy, wrong-headed principles.  Not only are the #ChickenMafia principles dysfunctional, there is significant cheating by some members of the #ChickenMafia which has documented examples here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here.

I trust that there are some members of Canada's #ChickenMafia who are at (or soon will be approaching) their breaking point, just like Ms Carole Morison in the Food Inc. documentary.  When the documentary was being made, she was a contracted chicken grower for Perdue Farms in the US; Perdue being one of the King Kong gorillas in the US #ChickenMafia.  For speaking out, she lost her Perdue contract shortly after appearing in the documentary.  The #ChickenMafia is rotting from the inside, as it is attacked from the outside.  Where should they go to hide?

As more and more of the members of the #ChickenMafia become disgusted, change will occur.

In spite of this turmoil both inside and out, the #ChickenMafia try to perfect the implementation of their dysfunctional principles.  The #ChickenMafia has lost their way.

That's why this Blog exists.

Hopefully, we can all learn and grow together in time.

The showdown for the #ChickenMafia is coming soon enough.

SFPFC's Friends & Visitors

This Blog has been blessed by all those interested in chicken justice, or have insomnia and no other treatment is as effective as reading this Blog.

Sometimes, I'm not sure which it is.

Anyway, the graph at right shows the country of origin for all our visitors since our inception 8 months ago.  In that 8 month period, we have had 22,278 visitors from more than 11 countries, all around the world.

The start of the Blog seems like yesterday.  Yet, the progress we have made seems like watching paint dry for the slow, glacial changes that slowly occur in the #ChickenMafia and #EggMafia and the governments of Canada.

We logged this milestone now, as we have added another widget in the right hand column, which will gradually fill out with a live reporting on who is currently, and who has in the past, visited this Blog.

We now have a new dynamic view of visitors to this Blog (screen capture here, dynamic live version at top of the column on the right.

My sole flashing blip looked a little lonely, and I didn't want anybody to get the wrong idea, so that's why I documented the above graph, so our history is complete.

I appreciate the interest around the world that the plight of Canadians and their crazy Supply Management system has attracted.  Your interest is appreciated, and I welcome your feedback and advise.  Some of you may have current or on-going experience dealing with oppressive or tyrannical regimes, similar to our Supply Management system here in Canada.  I'm open to advice, regardless of where it comes from.

Please pass the word to your family, friends, and business associates; whether in person, snail mail, email, Twitter, or otherwise.

The above pageviews represent 14.41 doublings so far.  We need 23 doublings to have the equivalent groundswell awareness equal to all 8.4 million eligible voters in Ontario.  Based on our statistical forecast and our current course and speed, we will achieve that goal around August 17, 2015; just 22 months from today.

Have faith.  We will get there soon enough!  We need these next 22 months to adequately prepare ourselves.  And once we do arrive, we launch Phase II of our campaign.

New & Improved

Canada's #EggMafia have been knocked down and are bleeding right now, but it isn't a mortal wound yet.  They'll soon come back again, to haunt and torment us some more.

The #ChickenMafia winced, then thanked their lucky stars that it was the #EggMafia rather than the #ChickenMafia in the activist's crosshairs.  The #ChickenMafia will soon make some cosmetic and superficial changes in response to the chicken abuse allegations in Alberta.  They will assume that everything will go back to normal and they can resume their raping and pillaging of all Canadian citizens.

They will assume we will continue to trust them.

There are more and more cracks showing up in the wall of trust.  Soon, there will be more cracks than wall, and then the wall of trust will come tumbling down.

How many people will continue to blindly trust the #ChickenMafia and the #EggMafia ?

Weighed and found wanting.

Reform !

Animal Abuse: Prevent & Detect

The #EggMafia have lost their way.

How else can we describe what has happened in the alleged abuse of chicks and layer hens at two farms in Alberta.  See our previous Blog post for details on this tragedy.

Not so fast, says Egg Farmers of Alberta, and Egg Farmers of Canada.  Their Egg Farmers of Canada website, says:

"Egg farmers’ number one priority has always been the health and well-being of their laying hens."

 I'm sure the birds appreciate the words, if not the actions by Egg Farmers of Canada ("EFC") and the  farmer in Alberta who is an alleged animal abusers to back up the words.

Since the birds are #1 priority, does that mean us humans, and the delivery of safe, fresh, nutritious eggs to us paying customers is #2 priority?  That of course, is an assumption on my part.

What Egg Farmers of Canada do say is:

Canada’s egg farmers place a high premium on safeguarding Canada’s food supply and are always striving for continuous improvement in their farming practices. Dedicated to Quality, our corporate tagline, is our ongoing guarantee to Canadians to ensure that our eggs are among the best in the world on the basis of quality, freshness and safety.

So us human customers should feel safe and trust the egg farmers because those egg farmers "place a high premium" on food safety.  I don't exactly know what that is supposed to mean.  It's seems like some marketing guru dreamed it up for them, akin to George Orwell's Newspeak in his book 1984.  Useless generalities, if not outright propaganda.

EFC's website   says EFC's Food Quality & Safety program includes:

"Inspecting all regulated egg farmers annually. Farmers are assessed by inspectors trained by EFC against key critical control points."

I have some questions for EFC:

1. What were the dates of those EFC inspections for the two Alberta farms that were recently alleged to have had animal abuse for their chicks and/or layers?
2. Can EFC provide me with copies of these audit reports?  If not, why not?  If no copies of the audit reports will be provided, can you provide the audit scores, or number of non-compliances found, or number of non-recommended practices found, or number of recommendations made?  If not, why not?
   
   
3. Did the scope of these annual EFC inspections include animal welfare issues?  If not, why not?
4. Did EFC or a third party ever audit these farms for animal welfare issues as part of that audit?  If yes, what was the date of those audits for these two farms?
5. What is the EFC mandated attitude, training, education, skills, and prior experience of the EFC's inspectors that qualifies them to do these inspections?
6. Can you supply me with a copy of these documented requirements for EFC's Inspectors?  If not, why not?
7. Can EFC supply me with substantial objective evidence that clearly shows these EFC inspectors who did these 2 farms were qualified to do so?  If not, why not?
8. Can EFC supply me with substantial objective evidence that clearly shows that all non-compliances or recommended improvements were promptly implemented by these two farms, and these corrective actions were subsequently re-inspected by an independent inspector and found to be 100% complete, consistently applied, and effective?  If not, why not?

I have sent an email to Alison Hebbs, Manager of Corporate and Public Affairs for Egg Farmers of Canada, with all of these questions.

There are 16 Board Members and 7 staff at EFC; none of whom have contact information published on EFC's website, and so hide behind Ms Alison Hebbs, who is the only person I can find at EFC who has contact phone # and email address.  Is this the best EFC can do for open, transparent, and accountable?

I'm sure Alison and her staff are busy people these days.  We'll have to wait to see what they say.

Throwing Eggs + Pointing Fingers

The media campaigns and Spin Doctors are busy, trying to make the #EggMafia 's chicken abuse issue go away.

I have collected together a few links on the evolving saga of chicken abuse at two #EggMafia farms in Alberta Canada on which I previously Blogged.

Since  the video was first released, almost everyone is running away and distancing itself from this disaster, with the exception of the media, and a few brave (or dumb) individuals.  To save themselves, Burnbrae Farms, the buyer/contractor for the two accused #EggMafia farms, has thrown them under the bus, and stopped buying eggs from them.  McDonald's Restaurants, who has Burnbrae as their sole egg supplier, claims no connection with the accused farms.  Egg Farmers of Alberta went into high alert, sending an emergency email/fax to all its #EggMafia members alerting them to refuse all farm visitors, and not to answer any inquiries from anybody, then refused to acknowledge or discuss the video themselves.

Since then, the #EggMafia have retained the services of 1 or more media gurus and Spin Doctors to try and put out the flames they ignited on themselves.  Ontario Farmer Magazine calls it #EggMafia "damage control".

Better Farming has added that the Egg Farmers of Canada, the Canada-wide Don of the #EggMafia, have hired the USA-based Center for Food Integrity to analyze the video showing the alleged abuse of chickens to get an opinion from them as to whether abuse occurred or not.

I'm not sure why the #EggMafia needed to distance itself from deciding whether the shocking video depicts standard farm practices, or abuse of chickens.  To me, the video clearly depicted abuse and unacceptable practices.  I guess it's easier and less messy when you use a hired gun, rather than do the dirty work yourself.    The only questions were whether the video was staged, and when/where the actions depicted occurred.  That required expertise in forensic science and video taping, not egg farming expertise.

MikeTheChickenVet couldn't resist, and had many interesting points.  MikeTheChickenVet tries to dismiss the video by suggesting what would a video of any of us look like if somebody snooped on us with secret surveillance for 5 weeks, then created a "5 Minutes of Horrors" from those 5 weeks of video.  As a practicing vet in Ontario who earns his living working for the #EggMafia, his point of view is quite understandable.  After I found his viewpoint, I sent him a link to my Blog posting and asked for his comments.  All of a sudden, he doesn't have much to say about the 9 questions I posed for the #EggMafia, to answer except:

chickenvet | October 22, 2013 at 11:31 pm | Reply

Glen, I have no answer to any of your questions. I’m not directly involved with the farm, and you seem to have your mind made up already, in any case.

I find it ironic how every one of the websites for the #EggMafia focus primarily on rainbows, unicorns, and sunshine, and how their eggs are produced by their family of families, so that consumer's families can have eggs.  Trust us, they whisper, again and again.

I'm not buying it.

There has been a serious breach of trust.  The #EggMafia needs to make significant, across the board change.  Neither media spin, nor unicorns and rainbows, will cover it up and make it all go away.

I hope all Small Flockers can, and do learn, some significant lessons from the crumbling empire of the #EggMafia.

Breach of Trust by Egg Mafia?

A video alleging neglect and abuse of chicks and laying hens on two Alberta Canada factory farms operated by members of Alberta's #EggMafia is available here and mainstream media reports here.  The undercover video is embedded below:



Alberta Chicken Producers ("ACP", one of the Supply Management governing body for Alberta's Chicken Mafia) has an interesting slide deck on trust, and building consumer confidence. Quite a contrast between the training course and what we see in this shocking video.

I suggest downloading a copy of this training course, as it may soon disappear.

http://www.chicken.ab.ca/images/stories/pdf/2013-charlie-arnot-building-public-trust.pdf

If it does disappear, I have archived a copy here, as of 2013/10/22 13:30 EDT:  https://www.dropbox.com/s/m3ti601il76ldz3/2013-charlie-arnot-building-public-trust.pdf

Based on this presentation, I conclude that ACP knew better.

Egg Farmers of Alberta ("EFA") is the Egg Mafia's governing body for egg producers in Alberta.  Do they talk to the boys over at ACP?  Did EFA have a similar policy and training program?  I can't find anything to that effect on EFA's website except a press release about slow transition away from battery cage systems.  If ACP knew better, then I can only assume that EFA knew better, or should have known better, but these shocking allegations come to light while under their watchful (or blindfolded) eyes.

Egg carton crafts by EFA. 
Don't they have something more important to
do with their limited time and resources?

It seems EFA's main focus for some time now is on egg recipes and egg carton crafts for kids. Recipes that use eggs are already available from many sources.  I'm sure kids enjoy the craft projects, but is that really EFA's top #1 priority, or should EFA focus first on more important issues?

Once EFA has all their top priority work done (eg. animal welfare, egg prices dropping due to better productivity, etc.) everything is running well, and all risks are contained, then and only then should EFA feel free to play with their egg carton artwork all day.    Prevention and ensuring of animal welfare by and for the Egg Mafia must come first and foremost.

Is EFA solely and exclusively re-arranging the deck chairs to make them pretty when they should be in the wheelhouse bridge, watching for and avoiding ice burgs?  No wonder the Egg Mafia and Supply Management is sinking like the Titanic.

"I share in the public's response to the video. The images were unacceptable."— Peter Clarke, Board Chairman, Egg Farmers of Canada
                                                        as quoted by CBC News

Egg Farmers of Canada ("EFC") sets the standards and expectations on a Canada-wide basis for egg farms; or they're supposed to.  Setting adequate and enforceable standards, then regular auditing to those standards is one of the three mandatory governance roles for EFC.  Corrective actions and continuous improvement are the other two legs of this three legged governance stool.  Did EFC do an adequate job in its important public trust?

Should everybody be held equally responsible?  By that I mean all who were directly and indirectly involved (ie. EFA, EFC, ACP, the farmer who owned the quota for the accused chicken factories, and the employees who did the actions and inactions complained against)?

Let's not forget what Farm Products Council of Canada ("FPCC") was doing while all of this was going on.  FPCC is supposed to be checking to make sure the overall egg supply management system is working well, and all of these other organizations (EFC, EFA, ACP, etc. ) are doing their job.  Did FPCC do an adequate job of auditing and supervising their charges?  Could FPCC have done differently years ago, so as to reduce the probability of this alleged abuse occurring?

If the video is real and a fair representation of events, I suggest there has been a breach of the public's trust, in addition to any civil and/or criminal charges that may soon be laid.

Trust is formed and protected by 4 factors:

1. Benevolent best interest of the other party
2. Open and honest communication
3. Competency
4. Predictable behaviour

When something like the Alberta chicken scandal occurs, I suggest that this wasn't the treatment that the chickens wanted nor expected to receive, nor the public (ie. breach of public trust).  Hindsight may soon prove that actions were negligent or worse,  and are therefore probably not in those Egg Mafia  farmer's best interest either, neither in the short term nor long term.

Arising from the factors affecting trust, I have some questions:

1. Was there open & honest communication:
• on the farm between the workers and the farm owner?
• were all employees required to report all suspected incidents of abuse, crime, or risky behaviours by anybody on staff, suppliers, or visitors?
• between the farmer and his customers, such as McDonald's Restaurants?
• between the farmer and Egg Farmers of Alberta ("EFA")?
• EFA farm inspectors and the EFA Board?
• EFA Board and the  public?
2. Who knew this was going on & when did they know?  Was there a duty to act so as to stop it, or report it to authorities?
3. Did EFA mislead the public by re-assuring us that all was well, that all animals within their Egg Mafia systems were being properly cared for?
• Did they have objective evidence to back up those assurances? 
• Did they know those assurances were true?  
• Did they care whether those assurances were 100% fair and true, mis-leading, distracting from the true issues, or not true?
• Did they disclose their assumptions?
4. Was there proper training for employees at those farms, as provided by the farm owner(s)?
5. Did the Egg Mafia farmer(s) adequately supervise, audit, and inspect his operations, and the work habits of his staff?
6. How did the farm owners objectively prove that employee training was effective, and being consistently followed?
7. Was EFA competent and effective in the regulations and  rules it established that could have prevented these alleged acts from occurring, or detected them earlier?
8. Did EFA define, provide, and ensure that quota holders received adequate training, and had full comprehension, and consistently practiced those training and expectations?
9. If yes to all the above, how do we explain the alleged acts that we see in the video?

These are some tough questions that need to be answered.

In time, we will learn if these allegations are true.

In the interim, I conclude there is already more than enough evidence to convict Canada's Egg Mafia and the Supply Management System for both chicken and eggs as being chronically dysfunctional, ineffective, wrong headed, costly, inefficient, an embarrassment to all Canadians, and desperately in need of immediate reform.

AIT to the Rescue!

Perhaps AIT can save all us Canadians from purgatory (Chicken Hell) that we were cast into by the #ChickenMafia.

AIT (Agreement on Internal Trade) is a Canada-wide trade agreement between all the Provinces, Territories, and the Federal Government.  AIT was born out of the 1999 Social Union Framework Agreement, Prime Minister Cretian's legacy for us all.

AIT is an intergovernmental trade agreement signed by Canadian First Ministers that came into force in 1995. Its purpose is to reduce and eliminate, to the extent possible, barriers to the free movement of persons, goods, services, and investment within Canada and to establish an open, efficient, and stable domestic market.

So far, only fluid milk has used AIT to escape from the infinite gravity of the Black Hole of Supply Management.

To make sure nobody else tries to escape, let alone being successful, the wording in the AIT agreement was tightened and made more explicit that nobody else will get out alive.

Fortunately, the AIG agreement has had many edits in the past, and more will come in the future.  There is hope, for AIT's Committee on Internal Trade advises all Canadian governments on both AIT, and what should be set as AIT's next priority.

To me, it's obvious that the laser beam gun sight needs to be trained on the Chicken Mafia, and helping all Canadians, for all Canadians eat, and about 90% eat chicken.

It's an easy win for all governments:

• 2,700 Chicken Mafia members get upset;
• 31.41 million Canadians cheer (90% of our 34.9 million population, the chicken eaters in Canada).

So like all good muckrakers, I sent all members of the Committee on Internal Trade an email asking them to act in the best interest of all Canadians, rather than bowing to the power and lobbying pressures of the Chicken Mafia.  You can read my email, and forward a copy to your MP, your MPP, Mother-in-law, and anybody else you can think of.

Let's see what happens next.

CFO's Popularity Contest

Chicken Farmers of Ontario ("CFO"), the Don of Ontario's #ChickenMafia, has become very popular folks.

The above graph from Google Trends shows all Canadian Internet searches on Google from 2004 to present.  From 2004 to January 2008, nobody cared about CFO.  Nobody.

Since January 2008, CFO has been a consistently hot topic in Ontario.

I wonder why.

Avian flu was a few years before Jan. 2008, so this isn't a likely cause.

World Trade Organization talks at Doha had collapsed the year before, but a report to the US Congress was released in Jan. 2008, which eventually served as the basis for restarting Doha negotiations later in the summer of 2008.

Was this WTO Doha activity that started and continued CFO as a "party of interest" on an ongoing basis ever since?

Of course, today its Supply Management and mis-management that has CFO in the sniper's cross hairs.

CFO Survey

How do you feel about the #ChickenMafia and #SupplyMgmt ?

I think it's time to take the temperature of the bath water again, and survey for or against the #ChickenMafia and #SupplyMgmt .

#SmallFlocker has been banging away on these tyrannical and oppressive chicken supply management issue for the past 8 months.  We have now passed the insignificant milestone of having over 20,000 visitors to this insignificant Blog.

Are we getting the point across that Canada's Supply Management system, and the Chicken Mafia who run it, are wrong headed, selfish, corrupt, arrogant, and self serving?


Let's see what everybody thinks so far.

In the column at the right of this Blog posting, near the top you will find the following survey.

Non-active copy of survey question.
  Functioning version of this survey is located
near the top of the right hand column
of this Blog, open until 11:59 PM on 2013/11/30

You have 5 choices available on Chicken Farmers of Ontario and the work they do.

The people who get a pay cheque from CFO, or fellow members of the Chicken Mafia could skew survey results if they stop all their selfish scheming and continuously click on this survey.  Fortunately Google's Blogger system software only permits one vote per computer.  How fast can CFO's staff get delivery on a bunch of new computers?  Perhaps this survey is a good way to keep CFO's staff and all other Chicken Mafia gangsters busy, their futile attempt to improve their public image by clicking on this survey again and again; busy work that prevents the Chicken Mafia gangsters from causing more harm to Canada and Canadians.

Before you vote, you may want to search this Blog for the keyword "CFO" (Search function is at the top of the right hand column) and refresh your memory of all the crazy antics CFO has been up to.  Be sure to take your blood pressure medication before doing this step.

If you want to leave important reasons for making the vote you did, feel free to add a comment, anonymous or  otherwise, at the end of this Blog posting.

Tenderizing Spent Fowl

With the growing importation of #SpentFowl into Canada (16.9% of Canada's current domestic broiler production, rising to 100% on or about June 2016, see Blog posting here and here), I thought it would be important to learn about the impact on Canadian cuisine.

Spent fowl are tough and chewy.  About a year ago, my dear wife wanted a roast chicken dinner for Sunday.  I poked around in the freezer for one of our roasters, found one, and roasted it on the barbeque on one of those "beer can chicken" cooking stands.  It looked a little on the small side (compared to the usual monster size we grow on our farm), but golden brown and ready to eat.

When we went to eat it, it was tough and chewy; barely edible.  We both sat there with a mouth of chicken, unable to successfully chew it.  I put down the drumstick, went to the garbage, fished through the vegetable peelings and soggy coffee grounds, and found the vacuum-sealed plastic bag that the chicken had come in.  Sure enough, I had made a mistake when I went to the freezer, for I had grabbed one of our spent hens planned for chicken soup, not a broiler.  No wonder it looked a little on the thin side.  The spent fowl that I had mistakenly roasted ended up getting converted into chicken soup the next day, as it was inedible as a roaster.

Knowing this, what is happening with all this spent fowl meat that is being imported into Canada?  Surely, it's not all going to chicken soup, or minced canned chicken.

Looking on the Internet, I found some research from Poultry Science magazine on the tenderizing of spent fowl.  Apparently, if you inject spent fowl with a 0.1 wt. % concentration of a mixed salt brine (50% Calcium Chloride + 50% Sodium Chloride), using up to 10% of the meat's weight in brine, injected into the meat immediately after slaughter, then put the meat in a vacuum drum and tumble the chickens for an hour to mechanically soften the meat and allow the injected brine to do its magic, let it marinate for 24 hours while under refrigeration, then the meat becomes edible.  By adding a 50/50 mix of Calcium and Sodium salt (rather than 100% Calcium salt), the bitter taste of the calcium is avoided.

Even with this, I'm sure it's not as tasty as a young, plump roasters.  I hope they don't feed this spent fowl meat in the Nursing Homes as a cheaper alternative to real chicken, as I'm sure everybody with dentures would have an especially awful time.

In conclusion, make sure your brush and floss after every meal.  You're going to need your natural set of chompers to chew through the tough old spent hens that Canada is going to be receiving from now on as cheaper cheating chicken.

Those on low sodium diets may want to raise your own birds to avoid the high dosing of brine that will be in chicken from now on.  Perhaps this is why CBC's Marketplace found that Canadian chicken had such a high sodium level, even higher than chicken in the USA.  Watch out for your high blood pressure!

New Offices for CFC + CFO

Chicken Farmers of Canada and Chicken Farmers of Ontario are pleased to announce that they have amalgamated their offices together, effective immediately.

Mr. Mike Dungate, Executive Director
Chicken Farmers of Canada

"This should make communications between our two organizations much easier", said Mr. Mike Dungate, Executive Director of Chicken Farmers of Canada ("CFC").

CFC is the industry lobby group responsible for mis-managing the overall supply and demand markets for chicken in Canada.  CFC has successfully ignited a turf war between all of the Provinces.

Chicken Farmers of Ontario ("CFO") has been pouting about how they've been treated by CFC and the other provinces for more than 20 years.

"I thought Ontario would have pulled the plug long ago", said Mike Dungate.  "But you have to give those CFO guys credit, they're tougher than they look."

CFO is the Mafia Don for Ontario's chicken gangsters, and fully irresponsible for screwing up chicken for all of Ontario.  Mr. Adrian Rehorst, Board Member of CFO and their representative at CFC, said "Ontario's a big province.  It isn't easy getting an even distribution of the screwing to all areas of Ontario, both urban and rural.  We have a 5-yr plan to further improve the screwing, making it faster and deeper."

CFO and CFC are so lost, not even
Google Maps could get them back
to reality.  Click map for full size version

There were rumors flying that the co-located organizations were steering a secret course for either Punkeydoodles Corners or Puce Ontario.  Neither CFO nor CFC would confirm or deny these rumors.  We attempted to use Google Maps to plot a course from the site of their mid-Atlantic sinking to Puce, but all attempts failed (click on map to see our attempt and the results).  Both CFO and CFC are so lost, not even Google could bring them back to reality.

There was also some confusion after their press release was sent by cell phone to our sleepy news room.  Poor signal strength resulted in us thinking that the two organizations were merging.

Mr. Dave Janzen, Chairman
Chicken Farmers of Canada

"Oh no, there is no possibility that we're merging the organizations, as nobody likes associating with those CFO guys", said Dave Janzen, Chairman of CFC.  He added, "They'll have to stay over there, and we'll stay over here, or it's over the side they go to join the other rats."

The Supply Management rats from Alberta abandoned ship long before CFC and CFO co-located their organizations.

The Albertan rats were leaving for parts unknown, and were not available for comment.

When asked for the reasons behind the sudden co-location of CFC and CFO, Mr. Adrian Rehorst blurted out, "It's not true that I pulled the plug.  I wasn't anywhere near the sea cocks in the Supply Management's ship."

Adrian Rehorst, CFO Board Director
and CFO's Representative at CFC

We asked for more information on this puzzling response to our inquiry, but nobody was talking any further.

We will continue investigating and inquiring about this curious turn of events.  If you have any information or tips, please call out Tip Line   1-800-CFC-SCAM 


<sarcasm off />

CFC and CFO announced they have amalgamated their offices together, effective immediately.
The Alberta rats abandoned the sinking ship long before CFC and CFO.

The Simple Way Out

Everybody needs a simple way out of this Canada-wide #SupplyMgmt mess.   Here is the solution.

Why or why didn't I see this obvious solution before!

Others have pointed out that there is an intricate web of interlocking statutes between the Federal Government and all of the Provinces, but Alberta has already given notice that they are leaving as of Dec. 31, 2013. That system took decades to build, and will decades to dismantle, but Canadians need relief now.

The 2001 Federal-Provincial Agreement for Chicken is the master document holding the entire system together.  This agreement assumes, but doesn't specifically state that the Federal Government will continue to charge an outrageous 285% duty for chicken imports.  Under international trade agreements, Canada must allow 7.5% of our previous years domestic chicken meat production into the country at a more reasonable import tariff cost of 0% (NAFTA) or 5% (WTO).

All the Supply Management  statutes, regulations, marketing boards, and everything else can stay in place as it is today.

This avoids the government being seen as reneging on its solemn vow to maintain and support Supply Management.  Supply Management can stay if that is what the #ChickenMafia and the Provinces want.  However, the Federal Government has sole jurisdiction over import tariffs.  Adjusting import tariffs avoids all those messy negotiations that take decades to achieve.

There have been many discussions about the value of quota, the crystallization of values for the quota for capital gains, the freezing of quota values, controlling the sale and transfer of quota, and reimbursing the farmers for the inflation of quota values, or any drop in quota values.

As I understand it, quota originated from the marketing boards, and was given away free to the Chicken Mafia as far as I have been told.  If it inflated in value after that, or drops in value, it wasn't the government who directly ordered that to occur; it was the free market.  Chicken quota inflated in price because it gave the owner a legal method to steal from all Canadians who bought chicken.  This proposal will likely drive quota values slowly back to where they started; worthless.  The sooner the Chicken Mafia realize this and cash out, the more they get to keep of their ill gotten gains stolen from the Canadian public.

Eventually the Chicken Mafia and everybody else may plead for the removal of these obsolete Supply Management regulations with one unanimous voice.  Until then, the Supply Management relic will be a fossilized remnant to warn us and our children about repressive schemes that create monopolies against the best interests of the people.

For the new solution to the Supply Management Monster, we need to realize 4 basic facts:

1. Canadians need immediate relief from the Chicken Mafia and their oppressive tyranny;
2. Chicken Mafia needs time to adapt, and get their house in order; and
3. Federal Government has taken the side of consumers in their recent Throne Speech, and needs to make make fast tracks on those promises if they are to be re-elected;
4. Federal Government needs tax revenue to solve their deficit.

Sigmoid Curve for the rate of change in the
removal of Supply Management from Canada.

Likely, the Chicken Mafia needs to un-learn their old evil ways, and re-learn the correct way of behaving under the new rules. This will likely be the limiting step in this change process.  If we force change upon them too quickly, there will be chaos that everybody will pay dearly for.

The Learning Curve is therefore a necessary part of this change process.  The simple concept is described on Wikipedia, and the more complex version is here. I suggest using a sigmoid curve, slow changes at first, then rapid change as the Chicken Mafia gain experience and competency, then slow change as it becomes more and more difficult once the low hanging fruit has already been harvested from within the fossilized Supply Management system.  That means the use of a Sigmoid Curve.

Here is the solution that meets all 4 of the above criteria, and will eventually solve the Chicken Mafia Fiasco:

The Solution

1. Announce immediately this entire plan, scheduled to start taking place 6 months from now.  That will give hope to the oppressed, and allow the Chicken Mafia to get ready for what is to come.
    
2. At 6 months from today, drop the import tariff on chicken from 285% to 265.11%.  That is a 7.5% drop.  The various branches of the Chicken Mafia can fight over who takes the haircut, or whether all of them share the haircut equally.  The most important factor is how much of that tariff reduction gets passed on to the consumers.  If the consumer gets none of the savings because of the continuing unbridled greed of the Chicken Mafia, then US chicken imports will likely accelerate even faster as the US food distribution companies want to establish a beach head in Canada, to get ready for what will soon come.  Passing the savings to the consumer will drop the driving force for the US invasion.
    
3. The Federal Government holds back a second tariff drop of another 7.5% (from 265.11% to 247.77%) if the Chicken Mafia plays nicely.  However, if they continue to screw the Canadian consumer, the Federal Government will drop the second 7.5% reduction onto their heads sooner rather than later.  The Federal Government can track the drop in tariff and the resulting drop in consumer prices, if any.  It a disconnect between these occurs, the Federal Government can threaten another 7.5% dose of medicine, accelerating the drop in tariff.  The tariff can continue dropping until the Chicken Mafia learn to play ball, and pass the savings onto the consumer.  It's the Chicken Mafia's choice as to which path they take.
4. Assuming that the Chicken Mafia plays nicely, a sigmoid reduction curve (see above) is used to consistently, predictably, and slowly lower the import tariff from 265.11% to 7.5%.  I believe that a 10 year period should be sufficient timing for allowing the necessary changes to occur without chaos.  Therefore 10.5 years from today, the import tariff for chicken will be 7.5%.

That's it.  Small Flockers 4 point plan for saving the free world from oppression and tyranny from the Chicken Mafia.

What do you think?

Should it be faster or slower?

Will the Chicken Mafia bypass or find a loophole to avoid the plan?

SmallFlocker on Twitter

#SmallFlocker ,  #ChickenMafia , #SupplyMgmt and #SpentFowl has now been added as a #hashtag for Twitter, via hashtag.org

I'm still learning all of this social media stuff, so bear with me.

I'd appreciate it, if you use Twitter, to follow us.  If you don't yet follow us on Twitter, click on the Twitter logo to the right ------->

When you get our Tweets, please re-tweet and add a #hashtag as appropriate so it starts trending on Twitter. We need to go viral with our growth and popularity.

If you can thing of other hashtags that we need, let me know.

Spent Fowl Doomsday: June 30, 2016

In my last Blog post (Chicken Mafia Causes Another Disaster) I warned about the pending doom from spent fowl imports into Canada.

Since then, I have been contacted by a few people who wanted to know where and how I came to that "crazy" conclusion that if the current trend continues, we will be buried alive in spent chicken by June 2023, killing the entire Canadian chicken industry.

They wanted proof.

My crystal ball is as foggy as the next guys.  Any time you take a limited data set and use it to project beyond the data to some unknown future, there is great potential for error.

That said, here is an updated graph and an updated forecast.  It's worse that what I previously warned about.  The revised date for Spent Fowl Doomsday is June 30, 2016.

Forecasted growth in spent fowl imports show
Chicken Doomsday is June 30, 2016 (less than 3 years away)

Click on the graph to get a full-sized version.  Hit the "X" in the top right corner of the full-size version to come back here.

The blue coloured line is the same data from Chicken Farmers of Canada ("CFC").  The thin black line is a 5th order polynomial forecast that projects the CFC data into the future.

Notice how the blue and black lines follow each other almost perfectly from 2005 to 2012?

If this forecast curve is correct (which assumes the current trend continues), spent fowl imports into Canada will totally replace all domestic chicken production on or before June 30, 2016.

Note that this new forecast explains 99.43% of the variations in the CFC's data. The only potential problem with this forecast is that I use 6 constants in the formula with just 9 data points, so I only have 3 degrees of freedom (ie. 9-6= 3).  The more degrees of freedom, the stronger the statistical weight that the forecast is correct.

Will the current trend continue without stopping?

Nobody knows for sure, but the wise prophet Herb Stein (1916 - 1999) once said,

"Things that can’t go on will go on, until they can’t"

Herb Stein was speaking about the USA's worrisome balance of payments and trade deficits at the time.  Many people wanted somebody to do something about that worrisome trend right away.  Herb took a different view.  He was concerned about the situation, knew it meant trouble, but believed it was occurring for very good reasons.  In other words, the trade deficits were a symptom of a disease, not the disease in itself.

Herb Stein reasoned that the focus needed to be on the disease, not the symptoms.

In our case today for spent fowl imports, I believe that also is a symptom.  Spent fowl imports are a natural response to the Chicken Mafia's abuse, tyranny, and oppression of the Canadian public.  Somebody has finally found a way to escape from the evils perpetrated by the Chicken Mafia.

Since this is likely an inside job by one of the formally loyal Chicken Mafia, CFC has a worrisome case of Mafia treason.  In spite of a blood oath to be loyal to the Chicken Mafia, somebody is siding with the Canadian public while they scoop up lots of extra profit for themselves, cutting in on the Chicken Mafia's former profits and market share.

This is like the Hell's Angel battling with Satan's Choice for a turf war dispute for the Montreal illegal drug market.  Everybody else had better duck.

The fastest and surest way to stop the spent chicken imports is to stop the Chicken Mafia's tyranny.

Stop the tyranny, and the spent fowl problem will immediately and magically disappear.

It's your move, Chicken Mafia.  What will CFC decide, if anything, to do?

The Federal Government has already eliminated the Canadian Wheat Board monopoly cartel.  They ruffled many feathers doing that.  Steven Harper is big on free trade, but he couldn't figure out how to overcome the strong Chicken Mafia, and still stay in government.  The Chicken Mafia has dropped the solution into the Prime Minister's lap.  Just do nothing, and let nature take its course. The problem with the Chicken Mafia will soon implode all by itself from the Spent Fowl Disaster.  Nobody has to lift a finger to resolve the problem.

The clock is ticking.  The Sword of Damocles hangs above the Chicken Mafia's head by a single hair from a horse's tail.  Nobody knows how long that single hair can withstand rupture, and then the sword will fall.

In this case, we can be a little more certain when the sword will drop onto the head of the Chicken Mafia; in 27 months or sooner.

There is less that 27 months before we obtain relief from the tyranny and oppression imposed by Canada's Chicken Mafia.  Unfortunately, many individuals will suffer severe financial damage when the sword comes down.

Quota holder for chicken know that when you're inside the chicken factory, surrounded by thousands of birds, you must move slowly and predictably so as to avoid causing a panic in the flock.  Same goes for the Spent Fowl Doomsday; you don't want to cause a panic among potential buyers of your doomed fiefdom inside the Chicken Mafia.  However, now may be a great time to retire and sell your Chicken Mafia operation and quota to some unsuspecting newbie who doesn't read this Blog.