The Canadian Pork Council is applauding a three month extension of the retroactive portion of the Federal Cull Breeding Swine Program.
The Cull Breeding Swine Program, which targeted a ten percent reduction of the national breeding herd, offered payments to producers who agreed to depopulate barns and leave them empty of breeding stock for a minimum of three years.
Originally animals culled between November 1, 2007 and November 30, 2008 were eligible but last week agriculture minister Gerry Ritz announced the retroactive portion is being extended to also include breeding swine culled between August 1, 2007 and October 31st, 2007.
Canadian Pork Council public relations manager Gary Stordy says the extension will help those who began their culls early.
Clip-Gary Stordy-Canadian Pork Council
During the roll-out of this particular program we received feedback from producers from across Canada that they actually started reducing their herd size prior to the start date of November 1st.
The reason for that is we are a fairly large nation with pork production across Canada and, in some areas of Canada, they were feeling the economic impacts a lot earlier than other regions.
So we did put in a request to the minister about just background and some of the information we were receiving and he accepted and followed through and worked hard to have this particular program made retroactive to August 1, 2007 so it will help out a number of producers who have reduced their herd size prior to the original program.
Stordy expects revised program details and application forms to be available within the next month and he encourages producers to begin assembling the information, such as shipping manifests, billings and payment receipts that will need to accompany the applications