Farmscape for October 3, 2008   (Episode 2978)

Manitoba Pork Council says the province's pork producers are hoping to have input as regulations for the implementation of Bill 17, the Manitoba Environment Amendment Act, are developed.

Bill 17, which establishes regional moratoriums on hog barn construction or expansion in southeastern Manitoba, the Red River Valley Special management Area and the Interlake, passed third reading last week.

Manitoba's agriculture minister has indicated, as new regulations are developed, there will be some flexibility for those who adopt new technology, such as anaerobic digestion or solid-liquid separation, and provisions are being considered that would allow operations to consolidate.

Manitoba Pork Council Chair Karl Kynoch says the technologies being promoted may have little impact on the amount of phosphorus getting into Lake Winnipeg.

Clip-Karl Kynoch--Manitoba Pork Council  
The one thing that they've been promoting is to use these anaerobic digesters and then they say they will allow an operation to move forward.

That's really puzzling to us because an anaerobic digester does nothing to remove phosphorus out of the end product.

It actually makes it more concentrated phosphorus that you have left to haul out so again we think they've taken the wrong approach to dealing with the nutrients.

They're not going to be able to do what they say and do better things for lake Winnipeg.

That's why we came forward with the zero percent solution which actually dealt with nutrients instead of putting buildings up so we think that was a positive way to go.

The flexibility they're talking about still doesn't deal with phosphorus.

Kynoch says there are some good recommendations contained in the Clean Environment Commission report and some that may need adjustment.

He says pork producers want to get talking to government and hopefully have some input into the new regulations to make sure those operations that are left can comply with the new rules.

For Farmscape.Ca, I'm Bruce Cochrane.

       *Farmscape is a presentation of Sask Pork and Manitoba Pork Council