When the farm press and public were focusing on Shawn Carmichael and the Canadian Food Inspection Agency’s raid on his property, much bigger fish in Ontario and Quebec were fighting for market through lower prices and threatening the supply management system on a grand scale.

Last spring, the Canadian dollar was soaring and this, combined with 30 cents per dozen U.S. eggs, made the 164-per-cent tariff no obstacle at all. As a consequence, U.S. eggs began flooding the market.

The situation deteriorated so badly that Joe Hudson, of Burnbrae Farms near Brockville, wrote to his suppliers, charging that graders who bring eggs in "over the tariff wall" are profiteering and "putting the supply management system at risk."

In 2006, according to Statistics Canada, Canada imported 20.4 million dozen shell eggs, and 3 million, or 15 per cent, were over the tariff wall. Regular industrial imports, according to the Canadian Egg Processors’ June meeting, increased by 3.2 per cent.

The memorandum says that each load of Canadian table eggs (1,600 boxes of 15 dozen eggs) diverted to the surplus pool, because of imported U.S. eggs, cost producers $30,000. The memo, which bears Joe Hudson’s name, has been circulated throughout the industry.

The culprits can’t be found, says the memo, because privacy laws prevent marketing boards from identifying which grading stations are importing eggs.

Svante Lind, a producer and grader near Oshawa, believes some eggs are going into long-term cooling stations to create the impression of a domestic shortage so rogue graders can apply for supplemental permits.

Worse, the board buys the surplus table eggs for $1.50 a dozen and sells them back to graders as cheaper "breakers" for 50 cents per dozen. Breakers go to processors, but Lind believes some of them are going back into the higher priced table market.

Richie Pilgrim, an egg producer at Grafton in Northumberland County, faults a loophole in government policy. Anything going over the tariff wall is kept as a separate statistic from regular import figures.

In the first four months of 2007 "over the wall imports" accounted for only 1.3 per cent of imports. The biggest factor in the drop was the increase in the price of corn.

Lind has put a European-style tracing system in place but big producers are lukewarm to it. He puts the name of the farm, grading station, type of housing and whether or not the hens are free range, organic or from a regular feeding program.

The system is not foolproof, Pilgrim says. But better than now. He says some Canadian graders send the egg cartons south where Americans pack their eggs in them.