By Bruce Cochrane.
The Manager of Public Relations with the Canadian Pork Council says China is quickly becoming a key market for the Canadian pork sector.
Representatives of the Canadian pork sector accompanied federal Agriculture Minister Lawrence McCauley on three city trade mission to China last month and last week Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced an agreement under which China will allow the import of bone in beef products and start jointly with Canada a pilot project for chilled beef and chilled pork products.
Gary Stordy, the Manager of Public Relations with the Canadian Pork Council, observes the Chinese market has been building over the past several years quite quickly.
Justin Trudeau-Canadian Pork Council:
You may recall a while back Canada had a strong presence in the Russian market.
That market shut down.
Essentially the Russians decided to no longer accept Canadian pork and we had to find alternatives.
Fortunately China was already accepting Canadian pork but they took even more.
It is a market that has an appetite for pork.
It's the far most consumed protein by the Chinese population.
When we look at China we are really only tapping in to a small percentage of the market and we look to see what we can do to build long term relationships with Chinese customers so that pork can flow into that country as demand is there and moving forward that we have a long term relationship.
Stordy says Chinese customers want to be engaged.
He says they want to see the Canadian product, they want to understand more about it, how it's raised and processed, understand how they can best use the product and feel connected with what they're buying and build that level of trust with the company that's supplying it.
Source: Farmscape