The 2017 Banff Pork Seminar kicks off Tuesday, January 10, at the Banff Springs Hotel. The theme for this year’s event is “Innovative and Sustainable Solutions for an Evolving Industry.
Mark Chambers, the Chair of the Banff Pork Seminar Organizing Committee, says there’s been significant changes in the industry over the last 20 to 30 years especially the last 10 years and people have had to become very innovative to be sustainable long term.
The idea of the seminar is bring people from all facets of the industry together from producers to feed companies, genetics companies, pharmaceutical companies to all share an understanding of what’s going on in research, how can we apply that research out in the field and how can we work together as one industry working towards a shared goal.
I think, based on what’s happened over the last several years, with introductions of new foreign animal diseases and the havoc it played in 2014 when PED hit North America. Obviously there’s been a lot of resilient producers out there and a lot of innovative people to be able to sustain production and stay in the industry and in business with all the changes that have occurred and the challenges that we’re continually faced with, and not just on the health side but also on a lot of the changes that are coming forward now with the new code of practice that has come out, converting to loose housing for sows and being able to adapt to that.
I know Europe has been that way for many years, probably in smaller systems and now North America is going to adapt that way with much larger systems. It’s going to be very challenging for everyone but we’ve got very resilient producers out there and very innovative producers so I’m sure we will get the job done and we’ll get some good results out of that.
~ Mark Chambers, Banff Pork Seminar
For more on the Banff Pork Seminar visit BanffPork.ca.
