Manitoba Pork Producers Applaud Canada's Participation in TPP

CANADA - Manitoba's pork producers are hopeful Canada's participation in the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade negotiations will result in improved export market access for Canadian pork, writes Bruce Cochrane.
calendar icon 18 October 2012
clock icon 3 minute read

Earlier this week Canada and Mexico formally joined Singapore, New Zealand, Chile, Peru, Australia, Malaysia, Vietnam, Brunei and the United States as part of the Trans-Pacific Partnership trading bloc.

Since the breakdown of the World Trade Organization negotiations, the TPP is increasingly being viewed as the alternative platform from which to grow trade agreements.

Manitoba Pork Council chair Karl Kynoch notes the Canadian pork industry is highly reliant on trade, exporting about 50 per cent of its pork and Manitoba is even more dependant on exports.

Karl Kynoch-Manitoba Pork Council:

Manitoba is probably reliant on trade more than any of the other provinces here in Canada as, in the past, we've been exporting anywhere from that 80 to 85 percent of the product grown here so anytime we can get new trade deals this is of a huge value.

Hopefully down the road this will turn into a higher price back to the farm level. The more demand we can get for the product hopefully the better the producer can do. This is really good to see that we've finally gotten to be part of the TPP.

If we were to actually eliminate trade we would basically lose 80 per cent of this industry and also 80 per cent of the jobs that are reliant on the industry.

As you can see trade is very important and we need to keep strong trading partners at the table to be able to buy the pork produces out of Manitoba and hopefully in turn return more dollars back to the producer.


Mr Kynoch says it's a relief to see Canada has finally joined the Trans-Pacific Partnership negotiations.

He says it's been a long road getting to this point but he's hoping participation in the TPP will result in reduced tariffs on Canadian pork and increased volumes going into those countries tariff free which will hopefully, in turn, push up the meat price and return more dollars back to Canadian producers.

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