By Bruce Cochrane.
A ten day trade mission to China that wrapped up last week provided an opportunity for Canada's pork producers to showcase their products to a potential market of 1.3 billion people.
Representatives of Canada's pork industry were among those who accompanied Federal Agriculture Minister Lawrence McCauley on a three city trade mission to China.
Neil Ketilson, the Chair of Canada Pork International, notes China is an important market for all of Canada's pork producers.
Neil Ketilson-Canada Pork International:
First of all, pork is the meat of choice in China.
China produces about 50 percent of the pork that's grown in the world and they consume that pork plus they're starting to import now.
With 1.3 billion people there, they are a growing economy.
The middle class is certainly growing.
They have a real appetite for imported food, quality food, safe food so they are an extremely important market for us.
I think last year they were our third largest customer for Canadian pork and they bought about 500 million dollars worth of product.
Right now they're know for a lot of commodity pork, the main cuts of course, the offal that we produce here, things like lungs, hearts, liver, all those kinds of things that there's a very good market for over there.
They seem to have recipes and they use those products for delicacies and so they command a very good price there vis-à-vis prices in other parts of the world for the same component so that's a very important market for us for that type of product.
Ketilson says this type of trade mission offers a real opportunity for the agricultural sector to show their wares in a meaningful way in a relatively short period of time to a large number of potential consumers.
Source: Farmscape