Canada Pork International reports a program developed to help Canadian consumers identify Canadian pork at the grocery store is being well received by consumers in other countries.
Verified Canadian Pork was originally created to identify Canadian pork to Canadian consumers in the grocery store.
Michael Young, the Vice-President Technical Programs and Marketing Services with Canada Pork International, told those on hand last week for Manitoba Pork’s 2018 Annual General Meeting Verified Canadian Pork must be processed in federally approved plants and the brand focuses on things Canadian producers do such as participate in the CQA program, which is evolving into Canadian Pork Excellence, and mandatory traceability.
The mandate came from the Canadian Pork Council and they were looking for a national pork organization to build a national brand for Canadian pork that would include those attributes. Up until that point we weren’t really using that as a marketing angle, the things that producers are doing on farm but it turns out these things are very important to our customers and they’re a big part of the success that Canada pork has had in the market so we decided to use that as part of the branding.
It has worked out very well. It’s been four and a half years now. We’ve got over 90 co-brands, so Verified Canadian Pork co-branded products in the market place. The brand itself has been extended to Japan and China and Hong Kong. We’re having a huge success in Japan. Right now our Japan office is using approximately 1.5 million Verified Canadian Pork labels every month.
Michael Young-Canada Pork International
Young notes in response to popular demand from further processors, retailers, food service operators and consumers, a website, verifiedcanadianpork.com, has been created which highlights the brand promise and the attributes of the product and offers access to recipes and home meat cutting videos.
