Carrie Bell: Exporting Award--Northeastern Ontario.

By her own admission, Carrie Bell says she never saw herself as a quail farmer until her husband was given a handful of the birds by a friend.

"I was a nurse at the time, but being a dutiful wife whatever my husband wanted to do at the time was fine with me," says Bell. "So, I went to work with him. We never expected it to become a two-million quail operation."

Founded in 1972, Nipissing Game Farm began as a small business producing 1,500 pheasants a year. Over the last 32 years, the operation has grown to produce over two million quails annually, along with hatching, breeding, growing and processing facilities.

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

The business, located in Callander, just south of North Bay, has become the largest complete quail operation in Canada. Across the country there are about half a dozen small game bird operations, however, of these Bell's is only one of a couple operations, which also breed, hatch, grow and process the birds all on the same property.

"We started by increasing our birds every year," says Bell, who explains a television interview about the farm in its early years resulted in a businessman contacting her to provide birds for his Toronto store.

Over the years, the grandmother of two says Nipissing Game Farm has developed a number of new product lines to offer a variety of choices to their customers.

"The new products are semi-boneless whole, boneless airline breast and whole stuffed semi-boneless," she says. "Non-fertile quail eggs, for human consumption, have also been added to our list of products that we are developing."

Along with the development of the farm, there has also been an impact on the community of Callander and the region. While the individual quail are relatively small, the production of two million quails annually has an impact on a number of area businesses from as far south as Toronto and as north as New Liskeard.

"Carrie has overcome a number of obstacles to create a thriving business," says North Bay Mayor Victor Fedeli. "It has become increasingly difficult to practice profitably in the agriculture sector over the years, but she has done it very successfully with a very diverse product."

Bell exports around 95 per cent of her products to markets in the United States, Caribbean and Japan, with 50 per cent of exports sent to California. She has also attended a number of food shows in Asia and across North America to promote her products.

"As a woman in the international market, it was unusual," she notes. "The face of sales in the 1970s was male dominated and it took a lot of courage to leave the security of rural Callander and venture out into these vast market areas on my own."

As an example, she points to a sales trip she made to Japan in 1985. At the time, Bell says it was risky to be a woman selling in the male dominated Japanese market. However, "now, 19 years later, it is a much more common practice to see women working in Japan."

Creating a bird bonanza has not been an easy task. Bell says she has faced a number of challenges over the years, including changes to the U.S. dollar, restrictions on importing the birds to the United States, and maintaining her workforce.

"Since all our sales are in U.S. dollars, there is the everconstant looming unknown about the currency exchange and no assurance that the pricing and profit levels can be maintained," says Bell.

Even though her quails are grown domestically, Bell says the U.S. Department of Fish and Wildlife (USFW) has deemed the bird to be wild. This means each shipment to the U.S. needs to be approved by representatives of the USFW, who may or may not decide to inspect the load.

As well, a number of documents are also necessary to get the birds across the border, costing both money and time.

The Food and Drug Administration is also involved in the process, and comes with its own list of items to be addressed, she says, adding the agency can take samples of the product whenever it wishes.

"The product is sent to the customer, but must be held intact until the FDA has released it, sometimes this takes as long as 25 days," explains Bell. "This means the customer, who was out of product and ordered it for just this reason, must leave it unused in his freezer and does not render payment."

Bell must also comply with additional regulations imposed by the Workplace Safety Insurance Board, Ontario Ministry of Environment, Farm Safety Association and other agencies.

"The best way to describe how to overcome each of these obstacles is simply to handle one at a time and to learn how to cope with each specific item," she says. "Each of theses agencies brings many obstacles, which are too numerous to name. I have maintained a good working relationship with each agency over these past 25 years of exporting."

By Dean Lisk

For Northern Ontario Business