The Chair of the 2018 Banff Pork Seminar says this year’s event will cover topics ranging from increased public scrutiny of the pork sector to labor to swine health and antibiotic use.
Mark Chambers, a Senior production Manager with Sunterra Farms and the chair of the Banff Pork Seminar, notes a positive economic outlook and growing sense of optimism within the sector has resulted in this year’s conference being sold out.
Some of the things we look at year after year are very common themes but this year we’re focusing on industry as a whole and people looking at us and critiquing our industry. Jeff Ansell is going to be talking about, when the headline is you because the pig industry has been under the spotlight for several years on different things as far as animal welfare issues and animal housing issues because that’s probably been one important issue with the swine industry being under the headlines and under the spotlight all the time.
We look at feed issues and some of that will be mycotoxins and how to address some of those because, with challenging crop environments, what can we do to overcome mycotoxins and issues like that. Another big pressing issue would be labor. Labor is a constraint pain and a bane for a lot of people in our industry so we’re always trying to look at what the labor issues are. Another big issue that is on the agenda this year is swine health and antibiotics because our industry has been under the spotlight as far as antibiotic use or over use and there’s obviously an increasing market for antibiotic free pork production so that’s going to be on the agenda this year and I think it’s going to be a very interesting topic.
Mark Chambers-Banff Pork Seminar
Chambers says people from all over the world attend the seminar not only to get information on the latest developments but it also provides a terrific opportunity for networking.
