Farmscape for November 13, 2006  (Episode 2303)

The CEO of Big Sky Farms suggests Saskatchewan's pork producers must either attract new players into the province or become more directly involved in slaughter processing themselves.

Last month Maple Leaf Foods announced it has canceled plans to replace its aging Mitchell's Gourmet Foods hog slaughtering plant in Saskatoon and will instead close the facility.

Big Sky Farms CEO Florian Possberg says, to remain competitive, other players will need to be encouraged into Saskatchewan or producers have to be more proactive and become involved in slaughter processing themselves.

Clip-Florian Possberg-Big Sky Farms 

Maple Leaf has announced that the plant will shut down in 12 to 18 months and, because it's a plant with really no future for the employees there, we believe there's a chance that that could actually be accelerated.

One of the options obviously is to see if new owners can take control of that plant and operate it for a number of years just to make sure that we have shackle space.

Long term through we know we need a more permanent solution and that's why Sask Pork is continuing to look at the feasibility of building a plant in Saskatoon or other areas of the province and all those good things.

Really, long term, we've always believed that an industry to prosper here needs to be a complete industry and needs to have competitive production combined with slaughter and processing to really compete long term.

Possberg notes there are smaller niche players in other parts of Canada who are interested in Western Canada and on the American side Tyson's and Cargil have been successful in the beef slaughter and processing industry in Alberta.

He believes those companies realize western Canada has the fundamentals on which to build a long term business.

For Farmscape.Ca, I'm Bruce Cochrane.

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