The Swine Cluster-2 Research Initiative, a federal provincial territorial programme delivered in partnership with pork industry stakeholders under Growing Forward-2, will expire in March 2018 and is expected to continue under the next agricultural policy framework.

Stewart Cressman, the Chair of Swine Innovation Porc, says, the focus of meetings last fall was on coming up with ideas to improve the programme.

Stewart Cressman-Swine Innovation Porc

I think Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada was very open and transparent about the process.

They were looking for areas that individuals thought could be improved upon based on the experience of some of us with two clusters under our belt already.

I think they seemed very responsive to what could be improved and streamlined.

Some of the accounting requirements that were quite onerous in the first two clusters, treasury board seemed quite open to some changes.

I think, although the programme hasn't been announced and our anticipation is that it won't be announced until June of 2017 at the earliest, it's kind of a blackout period now as they're being discussed behind closed doors among Agriculture Agri-Food Canada and the government.

We are anticipating a programme that has some improvements, easier to administer, easier for the research institutions as well in terms of invoice verification.

Mr Cressman anticipates in the neighborhood of 20 million dollars to made available for pork industry research under the next agricultural policy framework.