Canadian Pork Industry Continues to Face New Challenges
CANADA - The chair of Manitoba Pork has said his replacement will be dealing with a wide range of issues from the management of disease, to trade, to the replacement of aging production infrastructure, writes Bruce Cochrane.
8 April 2015
3 minute read
By: Later this month during Manitoba Pork's annual general meeting, after having served 20 years with the organisation, including the last 11 as its chair, Karl Kynoch will be stepping down to spend more time with family.
He notes, over that time, the industry has changed dramatically as it's addressed a wide range of issues from trade to animal welfare to the economic challenges that regularly confront producers.
Karl Kynoch-Manitoba Pork:
Going forward we're going to have continued pressure with Porcine Epidemic Diarrhoea (PED).
We've managed to hold that at bay so we're going to have to continue to deal with that and other diseases that come forward.
Also animal welfare. We've come out with a new animal care code and that's been implemented but again there will always be continuous challenges from the animal activists and that with animal welfare.
Country of Origin Labelling has been ongoing for quite a while. We're getting close to the end of that so we have to continue on and resolve COOL.
Another couple of big challenges will be stabilising the income for hog producers.
It's always been a challenge when you hit some of these dramatic lows for hog producers to manage to keep enough cash to keep paying the bills, so we need to continue to work going forward for stabilising the income for producers, and we need to rebuild infrastructure going forward so that'll be another challenge for the new chair to lead that is to make sure we get that infrastructure renewed and to stay strong.
Also there's been a health intelligence network developed in the western part of Canada.
That needs to be linked with all of Canada and also hopefully some day with the US.
Health issues are going to be huge going forward and that's one area that the new chair will have to focus on going forward, is making sure that we do what ever we can to detect diseases early and get them under control.
Kynoch says, while he has enjoyed working with the hog industry and having the privilege to represent the hog industry, it's time to focus more on family.
