The Chair of Manitoba Pork Council reports efforts to strengthen relations among Canadian and U.S. pork producers have been highly successful.
As part of its annual Trade Advocacy initiative a delegation representing Manitoba Pork Council was in Minneapolis last week and is in Des Moines this week to take part in the Minnesota Pork Congress and the Iowa Pork Congress and to discuss issues of mutual interest to the two industries.
Manitoba Pork Council Chair Karl Kynoch says the trip allows producers from Manitoba to interact with their American counterparts to discuss key issues such high feed costs, government regulation and animal welfare.
If you go back about eight years ago we had a trade case launched against the Canadians with live swine coming down here and we decided at that time that we needed to build a relationship with our U.S. counterparts so we’ve been coming down here for seven years right now.
What we want to do is, if there’s any concerns in the U.S. with what’s going on in Canada or live swine coming down south, we like to be here to answer those questions.
In the past it’s worked very well to be able to address those.
We’ve managed to build a very good relationship with our U.S. counterparts over the past three years.
Even though we’ve reduced the number of hogs coming south we still do have a significant number of live swine coming out of Manitoba into the U.S.
This trip coming down here one of the things that we’re talking about is the Country of Origin Labelling.
That’s caused a little bit of issues on the two sides of the border in the past but we’ve gotten to the point where there’s been a decision made on Country of origin Labelling and we’re talking with producers down here and trying to encourage them not to look at appealing that and move forward with a resolve.
The relationship, when we’re able to do this kind of stuff, I think is very strong.
Any time we get the opportunity to talk about the issues and maybe sort it out is very positive going forward but we’ve been very well received again in the U.S. both in Minnesota and in Iowa.
Kynoch says the effort allows producers to address issues immediately and he says he is pleased with the feedback he’s been getting from his U.S. counterparts.
