The New Brunswick Court of Appeal has ruled that the company cannot be forced to supply chickens to a New Brunswick processor, according to Times & Transcript.

"All these decisions confirm that Westco is free to sell its production to whomever it chooses," Westco president and CEO, Thomas Soucy, said in a statement. "This is the position we have been putting forward for several months in all our statements and we are pleased that another tribunal has confirmed it."

Westco Group has said it plans to take its chickens to a processing facility in Quebec until the company builds its own plant in New Brunswick. That decision has angered Nadeau Poultry Farm near Edmundston as they argue Westco controls roughly 80 per cent of the province's poultry population.

The court decision follows a ruling by a federal competition tribunal that rejected Nadeau's application to prevent Westco from taking its poultry to Quebec.

No one from Nadeau was available to comment to the publication on 21 August.

Westco has previously said it controls roughly 50 per cent of the provincial chicken market. The company has also offered to hire all Nadeau employees that may lose their jobs and to pay them up to 90 per cent of their current salaries during the construction of the new slaughterhouse reports Times & Transcript.