STEINBACH, Man. – Hog farmers in Manitoba, sick of financial bleeding, have come up with a fix for the industry – a cull of two million weanlings, which will reduce the number of pigs in Canada and, they hope, raise prices.
“We are proposing the government set up a similar program (to the sow cull), where we would humanely destroy the isowean pigs,” said Menno Bergen, a hog producer from Plum Coulee, Man.
Bergen proposed the solution to 250 producers and hog industry representatives at an April 3 meeting in Steinbach, Man. After two hours of intense comments from hog farmers, MLAs and representatives of the Manitoba Pork Council, Bergen’s culling proposal received almost unanimous approval. About 98 percent of those in attendance stood up to show support for the plan.
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“The people here have got together to show what we can do in 36 hours. The room was packed, standing room, and nobody left,” said Bergen.
The proposed cull of two million Canadian piglets will require a compensation price per weanling and the political will to get it done.
In February, the federal government announced a program to pay producers $225 per sow or boar culled. Bergen believes if the proposed weanling cull is added to the sow program, it should pull the industry out of the woes of low pig prices and high feed costs.
“I believe it has to be a national program,” said Bergen. “If we can get four percent of our hogs off the market, I think we can move the market and change the mood.”
The impromptu meeting in Steinbach sprang out of a conversation between Bergen and Lloyd Wiebe, a hog farmer from Altona, Man. They came up with the isowean culling solution and word of the meeting rapidly spread throughout the province via e-mail and telephone.
Boyd Penner, who sells Manitoba hogs to the U.S., was also an organizer of the meeting. The isowean program is needed, he said, because prices have dropped from $36 per weanling Feb. 14, to virtually nothing by early April.
“Now, I’m literally selling pigs for $4,” said Penner, who runs Southeast Marketing in Blumenort, Man.
“By the time I get those pigs delivered (after freight and fees) the producer has nothing left.”
Penner told the meeting that his customers in the U.S., mostly feeder pig producers, refuse to buy Canadian weanlings because of proposed country-of-origin labelling legislation in the U.S.
COOL, part of the U.S. farm bill, will require that animals be born, raised and slaughtered in the U.S. if the meat is to be labelled made in the U.S.A. It is expected to come in effect Sept. 30.
American operators don’t want to get caught with pigs that can’t be slaughtered, said Penner, who sells to customers throughout the U.S. Midwest.
The Americans he deals with are against COOL, but they have to prepare for the reality, he said.
Representatives of the Manitoba Pork Council attended the meeting in Steinbach and suggested that pork producers try to improve the situation through the North American Free Trade Agreement rather than a weanling cull.
“We’re all facing financial ruin, because of American protectionism,” said Larry Friesen, the council’s director of weanling export, who qualified his comments by saying they were his own, not the council’s position. “We built this industry in Manitoba, based on an open border …. This is Americans violating NAFTA.”
