A member of Manitoba Pork’s Executive Committee says, by keeping the lines of communication open among Manitoba and mid-western U.S. pork producers the misconceptions and misunderstandings that can lead to problems can be avoided.
A delegation representing Manitoba took part in the 2016 Minnesota Pork Congress which wrapped up yesterday as part of a trade advocacy mission.
Rick Prejet, a member of Manitoba Pork’s Executive Committee, says its important to keep the lines of communication open.
We had a breakfast meeting with a number of people from the Minnesota Pork committee and etceteras and some government officials. There were a lot of questions about from health all the way through to Country of Origin Labelling, Transportation and such. It was a pretty broad general discussion we had there. They’re interested in understanding some of the risk there might be with Canadian hogs going down there, the risk of what our supply is going to be doing in the future, especially with COOL.
People are wondering if we’re going to go crazy expanding our hog herd in western Canada and those kinds of questions. It’s just really a communication clarification on everything there. Again, it’s amazing, through all the discussions we kind of go, yea we are all in the same boat here kind of thing. Again, it’s a matter of explaining what we’re doing, how we’re doing it, why we’re doing it and taking away all the rumors and demystify the whole thing of pork production in western Canada so they can fully understand what we’re doing, where we’re coming from.
Prejet says the main goal of the effort is to keep the lines of communication open so when issues do come up phone calls can made to talk things out and hopefully avoid some of the issues we’ve had between the U.S. and Canada.
He says for the most part those problems are the result of misunderstandings or misconceptions so the goal is to make sure things are clear, that people understand what we’re doing in Canada, why we’re doing it, the issues we have and what we have in common.
