Int’l - Increased Slaughter Capacity Expected to Boost Efforts to Improve Canada-US Relations

Manitoba Pork Council says word that Maple Leaf Foods will build a new 110 million dollar state of the art hog slaughtering plant in Saskatoon will give its efforts to promote trade advocacy with the United States a huge boost. Earlier this month Maple Leaf Foods announced it will replace its 65 year old Mitchell's Gourmet Foods plant in Saskatoon. The new facility will be capable of processing 20 thousand hogs per week on one shift with the potential to double that number by adding a second shift. Manitoba Pork Council Chair Karl Kynoch when representatives of his organization travel to Iowa, Nebraska and Minnesota in January to further promote improved trading relations the Maple Leaf announcement can only be positive. "When Maple Leaf's looking at spending 110 million dollars in Saskatoon, that's going to be a benefit to all of the Manitoba producers as well as Saskatchewan because we just look at that as increased shackle space in Canada. To be able to increase shackle space in Canada, it just helps reduce the border risk. It's one of the things that the Americans have always been concerned about, is all these live hogs going south. Anything that we can do whether it be Manitoba or in Saskatoon, as that's where this plant went up, is a positive in reducing border risk. When we go down and do trade advocacy in the US, that's a question that the Americans are asking us, "what are you guys doing there, shipping all these live hogs?" If we can go back there next January on trade advocacy and show them that we've increased shackle space in Canada and that maybe they have some access to it, that's going to be a huge positive in reducing border risk. It doesn't matter where that plant goes up here in the west, we need more shackle space." Kynoch says efforts to expand processing capacity in Manitoba remain ongoing. When he moved into the position of Pork Council Chair approximately a year and a half ago one, of his priorities was to expand shackle space in the province and, he says, that effort continues.