The Interim Chair of Pork Marketing Canada is calling on Canadian consumers to ask their grocery retailers for Canadian pork products when they purchase pork for their families.
Pork Marketing Canada is a national organization formed to promote the domestic consumption of pork produced and processed in Canada.
“The Canadian Pork Branding Strategy” was among the topics discussed last week in Winnipeg as part of the 25th Manitoba Swine Seminar.
Pork Marketing Canada interim chair Curtis Littlejohn says the goal of the “Choose Canadian Pork” campaign is to displace imported pork with Canadian product.
You have to be strong in your domestic market before you can be really strong in your export market and over the last 10 to 15 years we’ve seen the import of U.S. product into Canada reach a record of almost 250 thousand metric tonnes.
With that kind of disappearance in the Canadian market we’re forced to find lower value markets for Canadian product.
Our focus is going to be to take back that market from U.S. product and to see that Canadian product is consumers’ product of choice.
Pork Marketing Canada will have three main target areas.
One will be retail, one will be the food service industry and the third will be consumers and the people that support consumers in terms of dietitians and health care professionals.
What we want to achieve is to allow the consumers enough information to make informed choices about the products they choose and we’re sure that Canadians and Canadian consumers will choose Canadian products.
Consumers are the end decision maker when it comes to what they buy.
If Canadian consumers ask for Canadian product that’s raised to Canadian specifications, retailers will put that product on their shelves.
Littlejohn says the Canadian pork marketing campaign has been extremely effective.
He says in consumer polls conducted following the campaign 37 percent of consumers recalled at least one segment of the campaign and we’ve seen a downward shift in the import of U.S. product and that means it’s being displaced by Canadian product.
Source: Farmscape.Ca
