March 29, 2024
BANGOR DAILY NEWS (BANGOR, MAINE

McCain decides to drop efforts to decertify Agriculture Bargaining Council

PRESQUE ISLE — McCain Foods Inc. has decided not to pursue its efforts to decertify the Agriculture Bargaining Council that represents potato growers in Maine.

Public hearings on the issue scheduled for Jan. 29, 30 and 31 in Presque Isle have been canceled, Vernon DeLong, ABC executive director, said.

Last October, McCain filed a petition to decertify ABC on the basis that it represented less than 51 percent of the producers from whom McCain bought potatoes. Members’ sales acounted for less than 50 percent of McCain’s total volume of potatoes.

“I hope it is behind us,” said DeLong. He said an aggressive recruitment campaign had signed up 95 new members since the filing of the petition.

“The new memberships have made the organization stronger and pulled us together,” DeLong said.

MaCain said that through the 1989 and 1990 crop years ABC failed to maintain standards that qualified the association under the Maine Agricultural Marketing and and Bargaining Act.

Now that the additional members make up the majority of the producers from whom the company purchases potatoes, ABC has qualified for recertification, McCain said Tuesday through Selz Seabolt and Associates Inc., a public relations counsel in Chicago, Ill.

Although Maine potato growers had shown less interst in ABC through declining membership, the recent signing signaled that growers did not want to lose the association, McCain said.

McCain said it clearly recognized that message, and wanted to continue its relationship with potato growers and to begin contract negotiations for the 1992 year.


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