The Canadian pork industry has faced increasingly stiff competition from the major players, including the United States, the European Union, Brazil and Chile on the global market.

Jerry Bouma, with Toma & Bouma Management Consultants, suggests first and foremost we should take advantage of being Canadian and draw attention to our consumers that the Canadian product is what it is and should be selected on the basis of quality assurance, safety and sound production and make the Canadian product stand out.

Jerry Bouma-Toma & Bouma Management Consultants

It's sort of like one consumer at a time, one community at a time, one city at a time.

You have to find a retailer and convince that retailer who sees a greater opportunity doing that compared to his existing system.

You have to demonstrate that Canadians are in fact interested in sourcing something local.

There are a lot of conditions that are emerging that really testify to consumers interest in knowing where the food comes from, preferably local food, being assured of knowing who is producing and how it's produced.

We should take advantage of all these things and build a program and work with a willing retailer to say, if we do this, there's more in it for you, there's more in it for us and we'll all be better off as a result.

We've gone a long way toward defining the brand.

We need to keep moving and actually connect the consumer with that product.

Right now when a consumer walks into a retailer and sees pork there is no evidence of where that pork comes from and who's behind it.

We need to push to that level.

Bouma stresses we have a good product and we have some natural advantages, good climate, the ability to produce grain and capable processors.

He suggests structures need to be created that will pull the players together in an integrated or coordinated fashion under a common purpose.