The executive director of Canada Pork International says the ability to differentiate its products from the competition is key to maximizing returns for Canadian pork products on the international market.
Canada Pork International is the export market development agency of the Canadian pork industry and its mandate is to gain and maintain access to foreign markets, provide market intelligence and market information to members and potential foreign buyers and coordinate generic promotion of Canadian pork abroad.
Executive director Jacques Pomerleau told those on hand last week for Manitoba Pork Council’s annual general meeting the Canadian industry needs to demonstrate its product is of high quality focusing on such concerns as food safety animal care and a few other issues in order to maintain its position world wide.
It is very important to differentiate.
Otherwise you would remain as a commodity trade and therefore everything is based on prices so, if you want to increase your return, you need to differentiate and demonstrate to your potential customers and buyers that your product is superior and of better quality.
In order to differentiate then we have to benchmark ourselves to find out where we fare exactly against the competitors.
That’s step number one.
Step number two is to look at how we do things and how our programs are superior to others.
To give you an example of that, the Canadian Quality Assurance Program is highly regarded world wide because it is an audited program and a few other things like that.
Eventually what we want is to build on the Canadian image to prove to our foreign buyers that the Canadian industry is a reliable supplier of high quality pork.
Pomerleau says the future for Canadian pork looks bright on the export market as economies recover, especially in Asia.
He says the Asian market will be a priority in the near future and in the longer term.
Source: Farmscape.Ca
