Industry support | Dollars needed to support hog industry, says McAlpine
A senior Maple Leaf Foods executive says government savings from reduced farm support payments over the next five years should be redirected to research and industry support.
Rory McAlpine, the company’s vice-president for government and industry relations, told the House of Commons agriculture committee last week that the next five-year Growing Forward farm policy should put more emphasis on research, food safety and trade.
“In Growing Forward two, we hope that strong commodity prices will allow rebalancing in favour of more support for science innovation, food safety, animal health, international trade and environmental protection,” he said.
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In particular, he said the government should find money to help the hog industry respond to retailer and consumer demand to convert hog operations from gestation stalls to open housing.
“I believe there needs to be a program,” said McAlpine when pressed about why the industry is responding to complaints about sow crates and why the government should support the conversion.
“This is a huge cost, particularly for small producers, and there is a very logical public policy reason why some government assistance to get us there would be very helpful and make it to a point where we can make it almost a competitive advantage for the Canadian industry,” he said.
McAlpine did not say how much support should be offered to the hog industry to convert to open housing, and no MP asked the question.
He also argued that the next farm policy framework should provide more money for research.
Ottawa’s support for hog industry research projects aimed at short-term goals is welcome, he said.
“But we see an erosion of publicly funded agri-food research in Canada and under-funding of meat and livestock compared to the crop sector.”
He said the Canadian livestock industry has gone through upheaval in recent years, mainly because of cost increases, a market price slump and a strong Canadian dollar.
Still, Maple Leaf Foods has committed to spend $560 million by 2014 on system upgrades and consolidation to meet market demands, said McAlpine.
Brian Read, XL Foods vice-president for government and industry relations, told the committee that Canada had a trade deficit in beef products with the United States last year.
“It happened last year for the first time in my short meat career,” he said.
Read also said the beef industry round table system started by Ottawa in 2003 in the aftermath of the BSE crisis has been useful.
It allows producers, processors and further processors to talk and understand each other’s business better “so they know that we’re not always ripping them off.”
However, he said that does not change the basic packing industry business model.
“We do try to buy the livestock as cheap as possible and we try to sell the meat for the most money we can get for it,” he said. “That’s business and we try to stay in business to make money.”
