Canada’s pork producers are calling for government action to help ensure the continued availability of pork post COVID-19.
Disruptions of pork processing, due to COVID-19, have resulted in an oversupply of live hogs causing hog prices to crash at a time when consumers are seeing shortages of pork in the grocery stores.
Rick Bergmann, the Chair of the Canadian Pork Council, says the economic implications on the farm are huge and that in turn will impact processing plants, the distributors, the truckers, the retailers and the consumers.
Here in Canada we’ve had a limited amount of pork plants being disrupted from COVID. When one does or when two do, it creates a lot of upheaval in the supply chain. Naturally when a plant closes down it can no longer harvest the animals. Meanwhile, on the farm, the animals are growing so then you have to find an alternate spot for them and alternate spots these days aren’t available.
There was a plant that several weeks ago that closed temporarily in Quebec. That would have caused disruptions for the producers in Quebec, the producers in Ontario, the producers in the Maritimes. There was a producer in the Maritimes that had to euthanize animals that were ready for harvest. These pigs that we love to turn into pork and feed our families, our country and the world, were euthanized as there was no home for them. That was a really sad event.
When the plants close, it causes so much disruption where people have to really focus on what they’re doing with the animals. It creates a lot of hardship and anxiety and financial hurt for producers.
~ Rick Bergmann, Canadian Pork Council
Bergman suggests a 20 dollar per hog payment would help farmers continue to feed and care for their animals and maintain employment as they ride out the crisis and help avert the prospects of shortages of pork in the future.
