The General Manager of Manitoba Pork suggests governments needs to balance regulations in a way that allows agriculture to remain competitive while providing comfort to those who buy agricultural products.
On Tuesday, in advance of the July 20 to 22 Federal, Provincial, Territorial Agriculture Ministers meeting in Calgary, Manitoba’s Agriculture Minister hosted consultations with agriculture industry stakeholders to gather input and discuss the development of strategies to help grow the agriculture sector.
Manitoba Pork General Manager Andrew Dickson says government has a key role to play in regulating food safety, food inspection, disease management, transportation, municipal planning processes and so on in way that ensures Canadian agriculture remains competitive in world markets.
We can’t have a cost structure in the province that essentially makes us uncompetitive in selling pork products into the world market. If that happens the industry will shrink, the employment picture will become negative, people will be out of work and there’s not a lot of alternatives here.
It’s really important that government work closely with industry to cut out the unnecessary red tape that we seem to get ourselves in a knot on. But there are key regulations we do need in place.
Some of these regulations provide comfort to the people who buy our products in the sense of food safety for example. They want to know there are strong regulations in place to prevent contamination of the product so it’s a delicate balancing act to try and figure out which ones need to be strengthened, which ones need to be fixed and those that need to be cut and thrown into the garbage pail of history. ~ Andrew Dickson, Manitoba Pork
Dickson applauds the open and frank approach the new provincial government has brought to the table and its willingness to re-look at legislation, regulation and the role of government in providing a better future for all Manitobans.
