SASKATOON – Canada is in the position to be the number one pork exporting country in the world, says the executive director of Canada Pork International.
Canada exported 272,420 tonnes of pork in 1993, the second-largest exporter in the world, next to the European Union.
“Our forecast is we will maintain that position with the potential in Canada to be the number one exporter,” Jacques Pomerleau told the SPI Marketing Group annual meeting.
New trading rules laid out under the new General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade reduce export subsidy dollars by 36 percent and subsidized volumes by 21 percent over the next seven years. These reductions will allow Canadian pork producers to compete with European and Asian producers.
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“We will have a definite competitive advantage over the next five years,” said Pomerleau of Ottawa.
With this export potential, pork producers must take a serious look at production.
“It means we must be more export oriented and not just a way of disposing our surplus,” he said.
One of the largest obstacles to capturing the markets is to in-crease production. Even Saskatchewan, an exporting pro-vince, had to turn down pot-ential markets because of a low supply.
To help increase sales Pomerleau said the Canadian Pork International marketing group is preparing a national pork export study to look at removing the “impediments” to increasing exports.
“There are plenty of them,” he said.
They plan to look at everything including environmental regulations, provincial and national policy, structure of the industry, and federal, provincial and municipal guidelines.
