OTTAWA — Canada’s border agency is cracking down on a type of illegal cross-border trade that cost the economy an estimated $394 million last year: the fraudulent labelling of chicken meat from the United States so that it can enter this country duty free.

“If you were putting vodka into a water bottle, and you claim it’s water, but in reality, it’s alcohol and you just cross the border and you get your booze across—that’s pretty much the same thing,” said Yves Ruel, associate executive director of the Chicken Farmers of Canada.

Canada imported just over 105 million kilograms of chicken designated as “spent fowl” from the U.S. from January to the end of November 2025, the latest month for which trade data is available. Spent fowl is the meat from laying hens that are destined for the dinner plate now that they are no longer producing eggs. (It can also be meat from hens used to breed those laying chickens.) Tough to the fork but cheap, it is suited to grinding or slow cooking for dishes like nuggets and soups. Spent fowl from North America can enter Canada duty free through the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA).

That is not the case for the higher-quality meat from broiler chickens, which are bred for roasting (or grilling, or baking, or frying). Canada’s supply management system restricts the amount that can be imported, with tariffs of around 240 per cent on anything above those levels, even from the U.S.

The Chicken Farmers of Canada, however, argues the U.S. does not even produce 105 million kilograms of spent fowl per year. The group representing more than 2,800 regulated poultry producers says anything above 60 million kilograms is a sign of false labelling and tariff evasion—that is, broiler chicken entering Canada classified as spent fowl.

In 2012, the Chicken Farmers of Canada noticed an uptick in the volume of spent fowl imported from the U.S. and felt something was off. Ruel said his organization started flagging the issue to the Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA), which at first did not seem to understand the problem. “If you’re not talking about drugs or illegal immigration or guns, it wasn’t much of a topic of interest,” he said, “but over the years, they paid attention and they found some issues.”

In October 2016, the CBSA asked Tip Top Poultry, a processor based in Marietta, Ga., about two shipments of spent fowl sent to Canada through a cold storage and export facility in Detroit. (The Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA) had suspended its authorization to export meat to Canada the month before.) According to a lawsuit later filed in U.S. federal court, Tip Top Poultry alleged the Detroit exporter mislabelled broiler chicken meat as spent fowl to circumvent Canada’s tariffs. (The parties reached a settlement and the case was dismissed in 2018. Tip Top Poultry did not respond to requests for comment. The defendants could not be reached.)

In 2017, the CBSA made the issue a priority for trade compliance verification, and the amount of spent fowl imported into Canada that year fell significantly—a drop the Chicken Farmers of Canada said vindicated their claims. During that crackdown and similar ones in 2020 and 2023, the border agency found a 33 per cent non-compliance rate and issued $217,550 in penalties. (The CBSA says the law forbids it from naming the firms.)

After a decline during the COVID-19 pandemic, though, the import numbers started creeping up again.

Based on its own calculations, the Chicken Farmers of Canada said fraudulent imports of spent fowl last year cost $394 million in economic activity, 3,600 jobs and $129 million in taxes. Tim Klompmaker, a third-generation chicken farmer in Norwood, Ont., who also serves as chair of the Chicken Farmers of Canada, said those numbers are personal.

“Those individuals are taking money out of my pocket,” said Klompmaker, whose three sons are also chicken farmers. “They’re taking chickens out of my barn.”

Last March, the federal ministers of agriculture and public safety said the CBSA and CFIA would work on “sharing intelligence to develop an action plan to improve detection, enforce compliance and ensure a level playing field for all.” The border agency also launched a fourth clampdown on spent fowl in January 2025, which is ongoing. The CBSA has audited 18 companies and resolved three cases so far, with one case of non-compliance.

Meanwhile, the Chicken Farmers of Canada is urging the border agency to use a DNA test developed with its support by the Natural Resources DNA Profiling and Forensics Centre at Trent University in Peterborough, Ont. Geoffrey Lumby, the founder of Toronto-based commercialization company Sterisense, who worked on the project, said it first determines whether the meat is from a hen, then whether its chromosomes match the breeding lines for broilers. It is not yet ready to roll out.

Luke Reimer, a spokesperson for the CBSA, said the agency is considering the feasibility of using the method. Currently, the agency uses a variety of tools, including examining paperwork and visiting sites. While the non-compliance rate for the first two rounds of extra scrutiny was 38 per cent, Reimer said, the 15 per cent rate in 2023 suggests the measures are working.

Using DNA testing “to deter mislabelling and the fraudulent classification of select goods” came up during the second round of consultations for the USMCA review, according to a summary from Global Affairs Canada. Still, the Chicken Farmers of Canada does not consider the mislabelling of spent fowl to be a trade irritant, as it is recognized as illegal in both countries.

“We don’t want illegal, fraudulently labelled broiler meat coming in,” said Klompmaker. “That’s what we’re after.”