By Bruce Cochrane
The chair of the Canadian Pork Council says Canada's participation in the Trans-Pacific Partnership will secure continued access to existing markets for Canadian pork and open up new marketing opportunities.
The 12 nations involved in the Trans-Pacific Partnership free trade negotiations finalized an agreement earlier this month and the Canadian pork industry is now counting on Canada's Parliament to ratify the agreement.
Canadian Pork Council chair Rick Bergmann notes the 12 TPP member nations account for 40 percent of the total global economy.
Rick Bergmann-Canadian Pork Council Canadian Pork Council:
We have opportunity of capturing more market now with this agreement and it also solidifies our trade with Japan that we've had in the past.
Japan is a billion dollar customer for Canadian pork producers and it brings significantly improved terms of access into countries within the TPP other than Japan, so countries like Vietnam and Malaysia and so on.
Vietnam, for example, is approaching 90,000,000 inhabitants and we know they love pork and we know we do a great job of producing a great safe product of pork so we anticipate that to really provide opportunities for us.
Canadian Pork Council represents about 7,000 farms across the country.
This agreement really puts some wind in the sales for producers and it helps not only producers but the whole chain of industries and so on that will benefit from it.
We employ well over 100,000 people.
To be able to keep those links in that chain strong, I think is a just super deal for Canada.
Bergmann points out the deal still has to go through Parliament for ratification and he encourages producers and other stakeholders to take time out of their schedules and meet with their local candidates to impress upon them the importance of this agreement.
Source: Farmscape