Farmscape for January 8, 2013

Animal welfare, Country of Origin Labelling and issues related to the number of Canadian weanlings exported into the U.S. are expected to be among the topics discussed later this month when a delegation from Manitoba Pork Council travels to Minneapolis and Des Moines.
A delegation representing Manitoba Pork Council will travel south to participate in the Minnesota Pork Congress January 16 and 17 and the Iowa Pork Congress January 23 and 24.
Karl Kynoch, the chair of Manitoba Pork Council, says in addition to participating in the trade shows delegates will be meeting with representatives of both government and industry in an effort to promote more free and open trade among pork producers in the two countries.

Clip-Karl Kynoch-Manitoba Pork Council:
The relationships between Canada and the U.S. have been very good lately.
We started doing this trade advocacy about seven or eight years ago and we meet a couple of times a year, meet with both the boards in Minnesota and in Iowa.
We'll do a power point presentation there where we give them an update of what's going on in Canada and then they'll discuss stuff that's going on in the U.S.
We'll be talking about the animal welfare issues, the Country of Origin Labelling, that's been a big one lately and also talking about the number of weanlings coming down, see if there's any concerns in that area, just about anything.
We kind of just put it out there as open book and we have a lot of discussions and that's went a long way to alleviate concerns and misunderstandings about what's going on in the two countries.
It's went a long way to build a very positive relationship.
I would say at this time the relationship is going good, trade concerns are not a high risk right now.
We've alleviated some of that but, all in all, very positive.

Kynoch says the goal of the trade mission  is to see where synergies exist and where people can work together to make sure that producers know what's going on in each others' countries and  what issues need to be dealt with.
For Farmscape.Ca, I'm Bruce Cochrane.

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