Farmscape for May 5, 2008  (Episode 2836)

Manitoba Pork Council reports a strong interest among provincial abattoirs in processing the pork from the hogs slaughtered under a federal program to reduce the national breeding for use by food banks.

Under the Federal Cull Breeding Swine Program producers who agree to depopulate breeding barns for a minimum of three years are eligible to receive 225 dollars per culled animal but those animals may not go into the commercial food distribution chain.

A 500 thousand dollar contribution from the Manitoba government will allow some of the animals culled in Manitoba to be directed to use by the province's food banks.

Manitoba Pork Council producer services specialist Jeff Clark says interest among the provincial abattoirs in playing a role has been strong.

Clip-Jeff Clark-Manitoba Pork Council 

In Manitoba, because we don't have large provincial abattoirs, our two federal plants aren't equipped to handle large sows at this point, so we've had to go to our smaller provincial abattoirs of which we have about 25.

We're looking at a model where we're going to have to distribute animals around the province.

Other provinces have had a central processing plant step forward willing to do the processing.

Again, here we'll have to distribute around to our smaller plants.

We've had some very strong interest from our provincial abattoirs and they've been very patient with waiting for this announcement.

I first contacted them at the beginning of April to gauge some of the interest out there.

There was significant interest but again we had to wait until confirmation of the funds from the province before we could actually move forward.

Winnipeg harvest has been following up with the provincial plants to negotiate price and scheduling etceteras so the interest is very strong.

Clark says having a food bank option has been critical for producers.

He notes producers have put a lot of care into raising their animals and they want to see those animals put to the best possible use.

For Farmscape.Ca, I'm Bruce Cochrane.

       *Farmscape is a presentation of Sask Pork and Manitoba Pork Council