DES MOINES, Iowa – American farmers have noticed Canadian hog producers’ attempts to get money from Ottawa.
And they’re beginning to put pressure on their representatives to do something about it.
“I feel for their producers up there because they’re going through a lot … but from our producers’ point of view, we certainly hope they don’t get those subsidies because that’s really exporting their pain down here,” said National Pork Producers Council trade expert Nick Giordano in a live interview with a nationwide American farm news network from the floor of the World Pork Expo.
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A few moments later, he told The Western Producer that farmers in the U.S. aren’t willing to see Canadian pork producers get cash from the government to tide them through this economic downturn.
“Our board, our state leaders are already getting phone calls about that,” said Giordano.
“I don’t think it would be a surprise to anybody – certainly not the Canadian Pork Council and our counterparts in Canada – if they are successful, to see a lot of pressure on us to do something about it.”
American hog industry officials were full of criticism for Russian, Chinese and South Korean bans of U.S. pork following the H1N1 outbreak this spring, but the request for subsidies by the Canadian hog industry was pointed out by Giordano as a particular matter of concern.
He said he hopes Canadian farmers don’t get the money from Ottawa, because it might provoke more strains to the Canada-U.S. relationship.
“We enjoy great relations with the Canadian Pork Council and Canadian producers and we’ve got so much in common, and unfortunately one of the things we’ve got in common on both sides of the border is suffering.”
Canadian hog producers might not feel relations are so good, especially considering the imposition of mandatory country-of- origin labelling.
NPPC president Don Butler said COOL, which his organization disagreed with, is now a fact of life and producers aren’t likely to care about the issue any longer.
“It doesn’t get a lot of producer attention. It’s sort of out of sight, out of mind,” said Butler, who raises hogs in North Carolina.
“I know in Canada the perspective is different, the position is different.”
He doubted enough U.S. hog producers were hurt by COOL to demand any revision of the law in Canada’s favour.
“Overall I’d say the impact to U.S. pork producers is minimal. It’s not a big issue to most producers,” said Butler.
