Farm-Scape, Episode 1602

Despite a US Commerce Department ruling that imported Canadian hogs are not countervailable, the National Pork Producers Council will press on with trade actions against the Canadian industry. Earlier this week, citing a US Commerce Department preliminary determination that Canadian pork producers are not illegally subsidized, the Canadian Pork Council urged the NPPC to withdraw countervail and antidumping duty actions.

National Pork Producers Council Past-President Jon Caspers, a producer from Iowa, says the organization asking the commerce department to consider additional information prior to issuing its final determination.

"They did investigate a number of subsidies although there are a number of subsidy programs that, for some reason, the commerce department chose not to investigate. We've asked them to take a look at those programs.

Also they found that some of the subsidy programs were illegal but then, when they accumulated the total of those, they found that they didn't meet a threshold high enough to justify putting in place any kind of a countervailing duty.

We're going to continue to provide information to the commerce department and we expect that they'll consider that. Hopefully we'll have a favorable ruling when they make their final determination sometime late this year or early next."

The US International Trade Commission is expected to issue its preliminary determination on the other aspect of the case, the antidumping action, sometime around the middle of next month. Caspers says NPPC will continue to press ahead with its case at least until that ruling comes down. Meanwhile, he stresses, the Commerce Department ruling is preliminary and NPPC still hopes for a favorable final determination.

For Farmscape.Ca, I'm Bruce Cochrane.