Collaboration was the main message at Alberta Pork’s annual general meeting held November 20, in Calgary, said its executive director.
Speakers were expected to focus on collaboration within the supply chain to raise the awareness of pork, said Darcy Fitzgerald.
“That is a big thing for us, to work across the country and create greater awareness. The consumer has moved away from pork and they don’t know about pork and how to cook it and where to get it from. It doesn’t show up in restaurants very often. It is in retail and does very well,” said Fitzgerald a few days before the meeting.
“Maybe we can spark some fire and collaborate a bit more and work on other issues across the supply chain.”
Between 150 and 160 people were expected to attend the meeting, about half producers and the others from the rest of the industry. About 13,000 people work in the Alberta pork industry across all sectors.
Over the past years, the Alberta Pork directors focused on telling their story to provincial MLAs and federal MPs about pork. Fitzgerald said their focus was on five priorities: trade, business risk management, labour, foreign animal disease and infrastructure, he said.
“On the five priorities we have seen some good traction.”
Fitzgerald said they reiterated the need for strong infrastructure that will reliably take their perishable product to port and not be disrupted by port or rail disruptions
“If we want this to work we have to have a great infrastructure because our customers are saying to us, ‘you are not a trustworthy place if you can’t supply the product’.”
The board has been happy with changes to the business risk management program, but finding and keeping labour is still an “uphill challenge.”
Fitzgerald said they want temporary foreign worker programs that focus on agriculture that allow workers to come to Canada and eventually become Canadian citizens.
The existing CUSMA free trade agreement between Canada, Mexico and the US sheltered pork producers from much of the US tariff upheaval, but the board pushed politicians to eliminate tariffs on Canadian pork products to China. Canadian pork markets have expanded in other parts of the world. Canada is now the number one supplier of chilled pork to Japan. Japan is Alberta’s number one customer. South Korea is expected to surpass the United States before the end of the year as the number two customer followed by the US and Mexico. •
— By Mary MacArthur