The Canadian Pork Council has identified international trade as a key election priority and is calling on candidates to commit to maintaining the focus on new trade agreements and addressing U.S. Mandatory Country of Origin Labelling.
The Canadian Pork Council’s Canadian Pork Industry Platform for the 2015 Federal Election outlines a range of pork industry priorities, including commitments from candidates on business risk management programs, trade, biosecurity, animal health and labor.
CPC chair Rick Bergmann says, on the matter of trade, Canada must negotiate to be part of the TPP or risk losing some of its most valuable markets and, in turn, quickly losing competitiveness.
Again the importance of trade for example, we do export to approximately 100 countries now around the world. We also recognize that we need to do that and do more of that because 60 some percent of the protein that we do produce leaves the country. The request is to continue on focusing on trade. Right now specifically we’re talking the Trans-Pacific Partnership.
There’s been some negotiations occurring through that and it’s very critical for us to stay within the front line of this process to guarantee ourselves a good future by having good trade relationships and deals with other countries.
Bergmann notes the World Trade Organization has determined U.S. Mandatory Country of Origin Labelling discriminates against Canadian cattle and hogs and has found the United States to be in violation of its international trade obligations.
He says Canada needs to continue to stand up for cattle and hog producers to ensure the harm is ended and to return to an integrated supply chain and, if the U.S. does not fix COOL, Canada needs to retaliate on U.S. imports.
