Farmscape for November 24, 2016

Canada Pork International is applauding the restoration of access for Canadian pork to Argentina.
Canadian processors started selling pork to Argentina in 1998 but those exports stopped in 2002 when the government of Argentina suspended the eligibility of Canadian establishments to ship product into that market in retaliation for Canadian restrictions on the import Argentine beef.
Last week, following a meeting Buenos Aires with the President of Argentina, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced access for Canadian pork to the Argentinean market will be restored.
Cesar Urias, the Director for Market Access with Canada Pork International, applauds the federal government for its efforts in this issue.

Clip-Cesar Urias-Canada Pork International:
Back in 2011, 2012 CPI made a direct request to CFIA and to the Department of Foreign Affairs to work with Argentine authorities and work around this technical restriction on our plants to gain access again on exports of Canadian pork to the Argentinean market.
We are expecting the market to be, in the first year, worth between maybe 16 million to 30 million depending on domestic demand.
Volume would then range between 25 hundred metric tonnes to probably up to four thousand.
This is variable obviously because there's still strong competition from the Brazilians in Argentina but we believe we do have a product that is suitable for Argentinean needs.
We can see that demand, especially for the further processing sector in Argentina and we've noticed this when providing cuts that are suitable for this kind of operation in Chile as well.

Urias says, from a technical perspective, the work is evolving.
He says the Canadian Food Inspection Agency is negotiating a CFIA export certificate that would include specific requirements in terms of disease control and product descriptions that may be suitable for this market.
For Farmscape.Ca, I'm Bruce Cochrane.

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