Farmscape for April 3, 2014

A Cartier, Manitoba area Hutterite Colony has claimed the top award at the 2014 Pork Quality Competition held as part of the Royal Manitoba Winter Fair in Brandon.
The annual Royal Manitoba Winter Fair Pork Quality Competition offers the province's pork producers the opportunity to showcase the quality of the product they produce.
Entries are judged according to 19 quality characteristics including fat and loin depth, loin eye colour, texture of the meat and marbling.
Karl Kynoch, the chair of Manitoba Pork, says in an age of high level biosecurity, this type of event allows producers to compare their product with that of their peers and the public to learn about the pork they buy.

Clip-Karl Kynoch-Manitoba Pork Council:
This gives the producers the opportunity to get out there.
They bring these carcasses in here to be judged and it shows them what type of a carcass they're producing and it just shows them if they're doing the right thing on the farm.
It gives the public the opportunity to come out and look at the carcasses and just see all the time and effort and also look at the quality of the product that they're buying in the stores and bringing home to their homes to cook.
It also gives the opportunity for the industry to come out and just show the public some of the things that we're doing in the barns by displaying some of the equipment used and answer a lot of questions so all around it's a real strong connection between the producer and the public.
One of the things to remember is that Manitoba pork is locally grown but it's globally preferred.
We are big in the export markets and we produce a high quality product.
That's why we're into those markets.
So what this event does, it gives producers a chance to bring their live animals in, have them graded and just see where they rank in the grading and just show off that high quality product that's produced.

This year's grand champion carcass was entered by Barrickman Colony at Cartier.
Signature Genes of St. Ann entered the reserve champion.
The top five were rounded out by Hidden Valley Colony at Austin with the third and fourth place carcasses and Rolling Acres Colony at Eden with the fifth place carcass.
For Farmscape.Ca, I'm Bruce Cochrane.

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