The Manitoba hog industry may feel under attack by the provincial government these days, but a senior bureaucrat has offered strong words of support.
Deputy agriculture minister Barry Todd told the Manitoba Swine Seminar that the province thinks the hog industry has acted responsibly and promised that the present “pause” – known outside government circles as a moratorium – on new hog barn approvals will be temporary.
“This industry through its development demonstrated a very strong environmental sustainability ethic,” Todd said in an interview after a well-received address at the seminar.
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“These are not issues that they have been ignoring by any stretch of the imagination, and that’s true of the agriculture industry as a whole in Manitoba.”
Todd said the government and the industry have a good long-term relationship, regardless of the recent moratorium and the ensuing uproar from the industry.
“Our industry and our staff do have a real genuine respect for each other. I believe the industry knows that their input is heard by government,” Todd said. “They have been very professional in terms of providing input to regulations, a very science-based approach as an industry.”
Todd received a hearty round of applause after his address.
The Manitoba government has imposed a moratorium on new hog barn approval applications until the Clean Environment Commission completes a review of the hog industry’s sustainability. The province has imposed no deadline on the commission to complete the review, and Manitoba Pork Council chair Karl Kynoch has said he fears it will take more than a year.
Many hog producers were alarmed recently when hog industry critics told the commission that they wanted it to study a vast array of topics about the hog industry, including topics that do not involve environmental considerations.
Todd told hog farmers not to be too concerned about this because the commission knows its role and does not have to investigate everything petitioners want.
“It’s their role to sort through all that public input and to narrow it down to those issues that focus on the mandate that they’ve been given,” Todd said.
“I’m confident that through their experience in doing this through many other hearings that they will arrive at a fair selection of the issues to be addressed that meet the scope of the issue that they were asked to look at.”
Anti-hog industry activists have aggressively used the moratorium in their campaign to stop hog industry expansion. One activist has requested more than 1,000 access to information searches from the provincial government – one on every barn in the province – which the provincial government has said would take its staff 13 years to gather.
The activist, Ruth Pryzner, said if that is the case, the moratorium should stay in place for 13 years.
Producers at the swine seminar appreciated Todd’s words, and agriculture minister Rosann Wowchuk has also spoken in support of the industry, but the attitude of the provincial conservation department, which imposed the moratorium, is unclear.
Many in the Manitoba hog industry feel the conservation department sees the industry as a problem rather than an economic mainstay of Manitoba.
As well, many hog industry officials and farmers fear the NDP government is singling out the hog industry for special punitive actions to play to its political base and weaken Green Party support in the run-up to a provincial election this year.
The provincial government has ordered the OlyWest project, which lost two of its three backers after the moratorium was imposed, to come up with a new business plan or face losing its provincial subsidies and tax breaks. Without the provincial support, the City of Winnipeg support will be lost.
As well, the Clean Air Commission study of the OlyWest proposal is on hold until its plans and ownership structure are finalized.
