The Exceldor company will euthanize “several thousand” chickens due to a lack of personnel.
This understaffing is mainly caused by the slowdown in the processing of temporary foreign worker applications by the federal government, says the company.
If they are not slaughtered in time, the chickens become too heavy to process in their factories.
“The equipment in our primary processing plants is not designed to process birds with weights of more than 3 kilos,” Gabrielle Fallu, spokesperson for Exceldor, said in a statement.
Chickens that exceed this weight cause daily breakage in the factories, which accentuates the delay.
Chickens that exceed this weight no longer meet the needs of their customers and can no longer be delivered to them, adds the spokesperson.
“With the meteoric rise in COVID-19 cases in the province and the precarious number of workers”, the company is forced to practice humanitarian euthanasia. Several thousand chickens will be euthanized, specifies Mme Fallu.
The company faces a serious shortage of personnel in the capture teams and in the Saint-Anselme and Saint-Damase factories.
After the strike which took place this summer, Exceldor cannot “afford to go through another major crisis without suffering serious consequences”, the company said.
Recently, Exceldor had sent a call to other processors in the industry inviting them to come and collect the birds so that they could transform them. Several thousand chickens were donated free of charge.