The Chair of the Saskatchewan Pork Development Board says the quality of Canadian pork combined with improved market access gives it an edge in the Japanese market.
In observance of signing of the Comprehensive Progressive Trans-Pacific Partnership and to further strengthen trade relations a delegation representing the Canadian pork sector travelled last week to Japan.
Casey Smit, the Chair of the Saskatchewan Pork Development Board, says Japan continues to be a key export market for Canadian pork producers for a couple of different reasons.
Casey Smit-Saskatchewan Pork Development Board:
First there's only a handful of countries that can export chilled pork to Japan and some other Asian countries such as Korea and China.
The European countries really are just too far away to be able to sell chilled pork over there and that is one of the fastest growing segments in the Japanese market so that's a tremendous advantage for Canada and we've made tremendous gains over the past few years and we're actually now posed to overtake the U.S. in chilled exports to Japan hopefully in the not too distant future.
In fact some of the latest came out that the U.S. right now is at about 52 percent and Canada is at about 45 percent of chilled pork exports into Japan and that's steadily growing for Canada so that bodes well.
The second reason is that Canada has an excellent reputation when it comes to food safety and quality.
Source : Farmscape