Wellwood Colony Farms, located near Ninette, Manitoba, has claimed the top award at this year’s Royal Manitoba Winter Fair Pork Quality Competition which was recently held in Brandon, Manitoba.
The 2017 Pork Quality Competition awards banquet, held in conjunction with the Royal Manitoba Winter Fair, took place at Brandon’s Keystone Centre. This year’s competition attracted a full slate of 29 entries from across the province.
Jason Care, the Manager-Auditor of Manitoba Hog Grading and the judge of the 2017 Pork Quality Competition, says the judging criteria was established to reflect the quality of pork that Manitoba’s pork processing plants are looking for.
Basically we’re looking at the quality. What we want to do is judge the best marketable hog that you’ll see in the market which you can purchase. What they’ve done is we’ve set up the criteria and the guidelines to measure backfat, from lean muscle mass.
I also trace out the loin square surface area. We have a colour system. It’s the Canadian pork quality standards that we follow to give points towards the color of the carcass, the marbling the conditions of the belly, things like that. Basically it’s to reflect the carcasses at the plant level of what they market.
The hogs that are in this competition, the plants would love to get these and send it out to the general markets because it is the cream of the crop, the best of the pork quality that we’re going to get and market on the street level, whether it’s food service or industrial.
~ Jason Care, Manitoba Hog Grading
The top five winners of the 2017 Royal Manitoba Winter Fair Pork Quality Competition included Wellwood Colony Farms at Ninette claiming the Grand Championship with Boundary Lane Colony at Elkhorn taking the Reserve Championship.
New Haven Colony North from Argyle placed third, Waldheim Colony Farms at Elie took fourth and Barickman Colony near Cartier rounded out the winner’s list in fifth spot.
