Canada Pork International reports the Canadian pork sector's focus on food quality and safety has enabled Canadian pork exporters to dramatically increase their share of the lucrative Japanese market for fresh chilled pork.
Verified Canadian Pork, a branding program originally created to identify Canadian pork to Canadian consumers, has evolved into the Canadian pork sector's international branding strategy and is now used in all markets.
The brand attributes focus on what Canadian producers do such as participation in the Canadian Quality Assurance program, which is evolving into Canadian Pork Excellence, the fact that traceability is mandatory in Canada, which provides a point of differentiation, and the fact that all Canadian pork is free of growth hormones.
Michael Young, the Vice-President Technical Programs and Marketing Services with Canada Pork International, says the attributes of the program resonate perfectly with what Japanese customers want to hear.
Michael Young-Canada Pork International:
The Japanese market is one of the toughest markets to be in and one of the most lucrative markets in the world.
The Japanese consumer is very demanding.
They are not self sufficient so they know they have to import pork so we've been working in Japan.
Canada has been there for over 50 years.
In the last 10 years we've been focusing on switching our volumes from frozen to chilled, which is the most important and the highest quality.
Source : Farmscape