Farmscape for January 19, 2018

The Canadian Meat Council is urging the Government of Canada to sign onto the Comprehensive and Progressive Trans-Pacific Partnership before the opportunity to do so passes.
The Comprehensive and Progressive Trans-Pacific Partnership is the multilateral trade agreement being negotiated by 11 of the original 12 Trans-Pacific Partnership members in the wake of the withdrawal of the United States.
Marcus Mattinson, the Communications Manager with the Canadian Meat Council, points out the red meat sector in Canada is highly dependant on exports and the Pacific market is not only a growing economy and a growing market for our products, it's already one of our largest export destinations for Canadian red meat.

Clip-Marcus Mattinson-Canadian Meat Council:
Canada has a choice to make.
This is about whether we want to continue to expand in this region of the world or do we want to forfeit this region of the world for other economies to take advantage of.
Just recently, in December, the European Union concluded their negotiations with Japan.
This is all about getting there first, to having the competitive advantage over other markets, most notably the European Union.
It's also about protecting jobs.
The loss of Japan for example, this is one of Canada's most valuable markets in this industry.
We're talking about jeopardizing 20 percent of our current global exports for meat and that translates into about 14 thousand jobs as well.
This also really throws a wrench into the sector's ability to contribute to the Government of Canada's agri-food export goal and that's about 75 billion dollars by 2025 so there's a lot at stake here.
It's not only about the incredible amount of business, the potential.
It's also about what we already have, the number of jobs in this country that we are here because of the trade that we do with these countries.

Mattinson says it's important that we conclude this quickly and that Canada get's its competitive advantage in that region.
For Farmscape.Ca, I'm Bruce Cochrane.

       *Farmscape is a presentation of Sask Pork and Manitoba Pork