COLUMN: Carillon Flashback June 22, 2017 – Manitoba’s swine industry welcomes reduced red tape

The chairman of the Canadian Pork Council feels confident the change in the provincial government last year will auger well for his industry, and is not overly concerned about a threat by the United States president to reopen trade talks.

Rick Bergmann says the Manitoba Minister of Agriculture wants to remove red tape and eliminate some of the many hoops hog producers must jump through to expand their operations, or build new barns.

Asked about the possibility of the NDP moratorium on hog barn construction being lifted, Bergmann suggested it was more a matter of creating the ability to expand and upgrade their businesses with the elimination of all the “red tape”.

“The industry will abide by the regulations….minimize the red tape. Here in Manitoba there has been no real building for a decade, and the facilities are getting older.”

Manitoba Pork General Manager Andrew Dickson welcomes Manitoba Conservative government plans to take clauses out of the Manitoba Environment Act that have effectively created a ban on hog barn construction and expansion.

In particular, there was the requirement to install an anaerobic digestion treatment system for hog manure. While the previous NDP provincial government did not consider this regulation to be a ban, Dickson says that in essence that is what it was.

“It’s like giving a 16-year-old a driver’s license that is restricted to driving an Aston Martin. While he is not James Bond, and cannot afford an Aston Martin, he cannot say the government is preventing him from driving.”

Dickson says the new provincial Conservative government recognizes there are good ways of storing manure and putting it on the land as a crop nutrient. The best management practise and regulations under the “Red Tape Act” will reflect that.

The regulations will apply to all livestock manure, not just pigs. The changes will help to address the environmental concerns associated with unintended nutrient drainage into the Lake Winnipeg watershed. Safe manure storage, combined with environmentally-sound land application practices, will help protect Lake Winnipeg, according to the Sustainable Development Department.

Bergmann says Canadian hog producers are recognized around the world for products that are exported, and the value of an expanding agricultural industry needs to be recognized here at home in Manitoba as well.

“Too often decisions about hog barns are politically motivated at different levels of government. The economic benefit and spinoffs the industry creates are often ignored in the decision making process.”

Canada exports to 100 countries, with Asian markets, Japan and China at the top of that list, along with the United States.

And that poses the question of United States President Donald Trump’s threat to rewrite the North American Free Trade Agreement.

On the swine side of things, it comes down to “cross-border shopping,” and the current arrangement is very good for both countries. Canada sends millions of ISO weans to be finished in the United States and that results in thousands of kilos of meat coming back.

It has been a successful arrangement and both sides have done well by it. The American market for Ontario and Western Canadian ISO weans has been particularly strong, because American finishers like the genetics and health status Canada provides.

NAFTA is obviously about more than pork, but Bergmann feels pork is the example they should be looking at when discussing other traded commodities, like softwood lumber, for example.