The general manager of Manitoba Pork is calling for legislative changes that will open the door for the development of an effective mortality insurance program that will protect pork producers from the losses caused by unforeseen disease outbreaks.
The effort to develop a mortality insurance program for the swine industry began about 10 years ago in response to the devastation caused by Porcine Circovirus, primarily in Ontario and Quebec, about ten years ago.
Andrew Dickson, the general manager of Manitoba Pork, says the aim is to try and reduce the volatility in the pork industry using insurance products and federal and provincial governments have identified this as a priority item.
We’ve arrived at a point now where the provinces which are responsible for the development and delivery of agricultural insurance products in Canada with the support of the federal government have attempted to do different approaches on this.
Manitoba is the lead on it and, by the end of last year, 2014, we finally had a product that we took to a group of producers to try and test market.
While the premiums were good and the coverages were reasonable in terms of dollar values, the real issue was because of the high deductibles that were put into the program as a result of an administrative set of policies laid out by the federal and provincial governments some years ago, the deductibles are so high that essentially a producer wouldn’t be able to make a claim in 20 years based on statistical averages and so, while it was a good program, if you’re not going to be able to make a claim there was no point in moving forward.
Dickson says, because of the way legislation is written in various provinces and federally we need to rethink how we do insurance in livestock.
He says we actually did have a product in place at the end of last year but because of the issues with it we have to go back to the drawing board and see how we can change some of the numbers.
