Pay Aaron Hiltz's Egg-Board Fine!

In Canada, 40 years ago some egg farmers had a great idea for how to ensure that they could get a fair price for their products into the future.  They created a supply management system where existing farmers would be assigned a mandatory quota for their layer birds.  The quota for a bird started out as being free, and many farmers had them, and it helped protect the price for the eggs by limiting egg supply on the market.  Back then 700 birds was a typical and economically viable flock for a small family farm.  But through the years farming became more and more industrialized, and some of the farmers wanted to make more money so they started paying for other farmers' quotas.  Now, only a couple dozen farms in Nova Scotia produce almost all of the eggs, and the average number of birds owned by each industrial farm is over 30,000!  And the price for quota has reached $200 just for one laying bird!  That means the average market value of the quota for a farm is over $6 million!  The cost of the quota makes it prohibitive to become an egg farmer.  So when one young couple wanted to start a new small family farm producing pasture-raised eggs from happy hens with lots of green grass, fresh air, and sunshine, there was a tremendous lobby from the quota holders to stop him!  On October 1st 2014 Aaron Hiltz was ordered to pay $1500 for an offense of owing 700 hens, contradicting the quota holders' rule that you can only farm 200 hens if you don't have egg quota.  But many people do not like industrial eggs from hens who never see the outside of a barn, and we want to have access to pasture raised eggs.  And we want to see new farmers be able to start farming in this country.  So, let's thank Aaron for trying to produce happy, healthy, sustainable food despite the barriers of the interests who believe they must protect their multi-million dollar nest eggs!  Let's pay Aaron Hiltz's ridiculous $1500 fine!