Farmscape for February 15, 2011   (Episode 3517)

Manitoba Pork Council has launched a multi-purpose survey of its producer members and is hoping to have responses back quickly.

Manitoba Pork Council has mailed a detailed questionnaire to the province's pork producers and is making the same survey available on line in an effort to gather more information about their operations.

Manitoba Pork Council industry services coordinator Arnie Thorlacius says all producers in Manitoba are being asked to complete the survey, if possible, within the next month.

Clip-Arnie Thorlacius-Manitoba Pork Council:
We're looking to improve the information that we have on hand regarding the industry as a whole.

We're trying to get the information we need in order to better advocate on behalf of producers in the province on issues such as manure management policy or environmental policy, stabilization, trade, things of that like.

We're also conducting it in order to collect some information for the new premises registration regulation that the province recently announced so that they can use that in cases where might be a disease outbreak and that way they'll be able to more quickly trace animals back to the premises where they may have originated in order to better mitigate any problems that might arise from that sort of thing.

As far as what we're actually asking for, we're asking for the premises identification information so things like legal land description, contact information, phone numbers, mailing addresses.

We're also asking for the capacity of the sites, we're asking some questions regarding manure management, land base information so that we can get a better idea of how producers are going to deal with the new nutrient management regulations that are going to come into effect and we're also asking some questions regarding how producers have been selling their hogs and how things such as COOL have affected that over the last few years.

For more information on the Manitoba Pork Council producer survey or to participate in the on-line version visit manitobapork.com.

For Farmscape.Ca, I'm Bruce Cochrane.

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