Farmscape for March 4, 2011   (Episode 3529)

Officials with Manitoba Pork Council are confident information being gathered through a province wide survey will enable the organization to better advocate on behalf of pork producers on key issues such as environmental policy, stabilization programs and trade.

Manitoba Pork Council has mailed a detailed questionnaire to the province's pork producers and is making the same survey available on line in an effort to gather more information about their operations.

Industry services coordinator Arnie Thorlacius says the organization is looking to update the information it uses when advocating on behalf of producers and collecting information for the province's recently announced premises registration regulation.

Clip-Arnie Thorlacius-Manitoba Pork Council:
We're asking all of the producers in the province to provide information.

We decided that if we were going to conduct a survey we'd try to collect as much information as possible.

I've done a few run-throughs of it so far and it usually takes about an hour to get through but it might go a little quicker depending on the size of the producer's particular operation.

We've asked them to try to get the information back to us within a month but we're flexible on that.

We're hoping to get all of the information back within at least a year.

The information is going to be held only by MPC.

The only information we'll be sharing is the information for the premise registration and those fields are clearly highlighted in the survey.

Producers will see them.

They're the fields that we've highlighted in pink so they understand that's the information we'll be sharing with the government.

All the other information will be used only by employees of the council and it'll be held and used in accordance with our privacy policy.

Thorlacius says producers are being asked to provide premise identification information, details of their operations, how they market their hogs and how they have been impacted by issues such as COOL.

For more information on the Manitoba Pork Council producer survey or to participate in the on-line version visit manitobapork.com.

For Farmscape.Ca, I'm Bruce Cochrane.

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