By Bruce Cochrane
The chair of Manitoba Pork Council says the organization's trade advocacy missions to the U.S. have been highly successful in building awareness of issues of mutual concern to producers on both sides of the border.
Representatives of Manitoba Pork Council are in Minneapolis this week taking part in the 2014 Minnesota Pork Congress and will travel to Des Moines next week.
Manitoba Pork Council chair Karl Kynoch says these trade advocacy missions have been going on for a number of years as Manitoba's pork industry still depends on the U.S. market for about three million weanlings per year.
Karl Kynoch-Manitoba Pork Council:
Any time that we can meet up with our U.S. counterparts and better understand each others' industries I think that goes a long way just helping producers out on both sides of the border and it's been very successful.
The relationship in the hog industry between the U.S. and Canada has been very good.
I think since we started doing the trade advocacy we've gained a lot of understanding of the American issues and I think our American counterparts have come to understand a lot more about Canada.
We're just to the north of them and the biggest thing is that when you sit down and you talk with your neighbours to the south I think everybody realises that raising hogs in either county we both have our challenges.
We both have environmental challenges, animal welfare challenges.
A lot of times talking to an American producer is really no different than talking to a producer just down that road from you in Canada.
That goes a long way to understand that we're both working in the same industry and that we need to work together as a North American market not a U.S. Canada market.
I think we have a lot more in common than we have different and these trade advocacy mission have went a long ways to helping producers in both countries understand that.
Kynoch expects U.S. Country of Origin Labelling, housing for pregnant sows and Porcine Epidemic Diarrhea to be among the key items discussed this time around.
Source: Farmscape
