The Director of National Marketing with Canada Pork International reports the “Verified Canadian” branding strategy is proving highly effective in increasing the public’s awareness of and desire for Canadian pork.
The Canada Pork initiative, established in 2014 to stimulate the consumption of pork in Canada, is the national market development division of Canada Pork International and is a joint effort of the provincial pork associations and Canada’s pork processing plants.
Kevin Mosser, the Director of national Marketing with Canada Pork International, says in Canada we now consume 15 kilos of pork per person and, of those 15 kilos, we import about 30 percent.
In the past 16 years, really in the past 25 years per capita pork consumption has been on the decline in Canada so essentially the mission of the Canada Pork Program is that we want to improve the competitive position, the market share and the prosperity of the Canadian pork industry.
Some of the strategies with the verified Canadian pork brand is working with our participants, our processors and our producers. We’re also working with our retailers to have the Verified Canadian Pork logo placed at stores and at food service establishments. We’ve done other things, like we’ve just launched a series of recipe videos using a chef that highlight the verified Canadian pork brand.
As we look at imports rising over the past 25 years we look at our 2015 forecast at 200,000 tonnes of imports and that’s real interesting because, for context, 200,000 tonnes is approximately the size of our Japanese business. That’s our second largest export market.
But if we look at tonnage, Canada is still our number one destination for our product and domestic market size is almost twice that of our largest export market, the U.S. ~ Kevin Mosser – Canada Pork International
Mosser says the Verified Canadian Pork Brand is now truly a national brand and it’s getting a larger representation among our retail partners and our food service partners.
