Canadian hogs are a healthy bunch.
Producers have embraced a number of certification processes to prove the point, and it’s always something the Canadian industry brags about.
But is it worth all the extra effort and cost?
“We have to ask the question of, ‘If we’re going to introduce new programs and add on to that (burden of existing programs), where does the money come from, who’s going to play, and how do we extract that value,” said Neil Ketilson, general manager of the Saskatchewan Pork Development Board.
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Ketilson, who helped develop a certification program for PRRS-free farms, said farmers often ask him about the multiple certifications and demands they face as part of regular production requirements.
With traceability programs developing, animal care assessments and Canadian Quality Assurance in place and other programs operating, how much more can producers handle?
“All those things now become a cost of doing business,” Ketilson told the Canadian Swine Health Forum in Winnipeg.
“We try to extract value, but it’s very hard to do. So they become the expected norm and producers end up doing it for nothing.”
Ketilson said the new PRRS-free certification involves 92 farms across Canada, of which 83 have submitted test results.
The program is designed to offer buyers convincing proof that herds from which they buy are PRRS-free. This could become a much larger concern in the future as the United States attempts to eradicate PRRS.
However, farmers need the increasing number of certifications to add value to their production.
Ketilson said Saskatchewan and Alberta’s pork industry boards are examining “who is actually going to pay and who actually has the value” from the PRRS-free certification.
If the producer doesn’t get the value, why should they pay? If nobody’s willing to pay, if the purchasers of the isoweans don’t see any value in it or are unwilling to pay a little bit for it, perhaps we should just can it, say it was an exercise, it was a study and just drop it,” said Ketilson.
The same point applies to the other certification programs now in place.
He says instead of taking part in more quality improvement programs, ‘let’s try to see if we can’t extract some value from that and make sure that the people that are actually doing all the work and providing the biosecurity and all these things for disease prevention get rewarded for it.”