By Bruce Cochrane.
Swine Innovation Pork is voicing its support for the creation of a Canadian Pork Promotion and Research Agency.
In mid-March Swine Innovation Pork submitted a brief to the Farm Products Council of Canada as part of public hearings into the proposed creation of a Canadian Pork Promotion and Research Agency.
The new agency would administer the collection and distribution of a national levy collected on the sale of pork, including pork imported from other countries, primarily the United States.
Swine Innovation Pork Chair Stewart Cressman says a national levy on pork would put the Canadian industry on an equal footing with that of the U.S.
Stewart Cressman-Swine Innovation Pork:
I think the main role that it would play in the pork industry would be to provide the oversight, to provide the tools for collecting and then the exact use of the funds would flow into Canadian Pork International for domestic and foreign promotion and into Swine Innovation for research and development.
We are very supportive of this.
We look at it as an even or level playing field with producers in this country that are contributing dollars to research and development and to support Swine Innovation Pork.
This is a way of ensuring that pork that is flowing into the country from outside countries and primarily the U.S. that they would pay in an equal fashion.
It mirrors what happens to Canadian pork that is exported from Canada into the U.S. or live hogs that are exported from Canada into the U.S. so at one level as well it speaks to fairness and equity on trade between the 2 countries.
Cressman says the Canadian pork industry has waited for a long time for the creation of a national levy similar to what's already in place in the United States.
Source: Farmscape