With China and Canadian governments still at loggerheads re canola and such, so far Claude Vielfaure, still the president of HyLife Foods of Manitoba said it had not affected their pork and pig dealings in China.
Speaking to several reporters at the recent Manitoba Pork AGM Vielfaure said no, no effects politically, on pork. The only thing that it’s affecting is pork demand, which has gotten a little stronger because they produce 50 per cent of the pork in the world. There’s a lot (pork) that’s not there. So now the demand in the last month has really increased.
“The risk of this situation, currently being realized with ASF, is of significant inflation based on food and shortages, and perhaps actual protein reduction for many people. China is especially vulnerable to inflation driven by pork as it has been about 80 percent of total meat protein in the Chinese diet,” according to the New Geo-Political Economy of Food by Agri-Food Economic Systems.
Vielfaure said it would be good for Canada as long as we keep ASF out of North America translating to a massive demand for pork in the next year.
“It (ASF) spread over China over the last six to 12 months. All the reports, I’ve read a lot of reports, people I’ve talked to in China, it certainly looks like at least 40 per cent of the hogs have disappeared, and so it’s, you know significant.”
For HyLife either as a processor over there or as a producer, what steps are they taking?
“It’s challenging, we do have a joint venture in China with a partner there, and have many thousands of sows across all the different provinces in China. Our company is a little bit more modern farms, better by biosecurity, so we’ve been affected in a couple of sites, but generally, we’ve been able to withstand,” he said. “The pressure is on as the virus keeps moving and getting through it. A lot of back yard farmers in China, a lot of smaller farms with security not as good, so that’s a little bit of the reason it’s spreading so quickly around all the provinces. On that side of it that’s what it is, creating a demand for pork, so as a processor selling pork, and exporting pork around the world, China has certainly shown signs here in the last month to increase their demand, and want to buy more pork.”
Vielfaure said China is willing to buy the much-needed pork.
“Yes, the country before ASF was producing 50 per cent of the pork in the world, and so because of that, there’s huge demand there. Their primary protein is pork; they eat it a lot. So it has created demand. They need to backfill the emptiness of those hogs that they don’t have anymore, and so they’re buying pork, and they’re buying a lot of pork now.”
HyLife as a prominent Canadian producer how does he think they will continue to operate here and keep ASF out.
“In North America, we’ve been working very, very closely with CFIA, and the government in the last four to six months to try to do different things that will prevent it from coming in. One of them is Canadian Port Services have increased the fines and putting fines on people bringing sausages in their bags, and their carry-on luggage coming into the country, it was a big concern. They increased the inspection on that, on feed ingredients coming in, like I said there are new rules that just came out for importing grains from China that CFIA has implemented here as of March 29th.”
Vielfaure said the government and CFIA’s response is terrific. In these situations, they can always do more.
“You always want to do more, it could be devastating to our industry, but the government and CFIA have been fully on side, and are fully working with our industry to try to do whatever they can to help us prevent it from coming in North America and Canada.” •
— By Harry Siemens