Farm-Scape, Episode 1648

Manitoba Pork Council says uncertainty in the swine industry has slowed the number of registrations under the Canadian Quality Assurance Program.

Canadian Quality Assurance is the Canadian swine industry's national on-farm food safety program.

Manitoba Pork Council Swine Extension Specialist Melanie Couture says Maple Leaf Pork's October 31, 2003 CQA registration deadline was the factor that drove sign-ups last year in Manitoba but the number of new registrations has slowed since then.

"In terns of the numbers right now, we've got about 11 hundred validated barns and we have about 15 hundred registered barns.

That works out to 93 percent of all hogs marketed in Manitoba are validated under the Canadian Quality Assurance Program.

Pretty much all the production companies have taken care of all their farms to make sure they are all validated.

Most of the Hutterite Brethren are done. District 10, which is one of the Hutterite Brethren, is 100 percent and was the first district to reach that.

I believe a lot of what's left are small farmers, maybe five, ten, maybe 50 farrow to finish or they're just contracting, maybe some biotechs, but it's mostly smaller producers that haven't finished up.

It's been a tough year so I think a lot of them have sort of tried to hold on as long as they can to see if they're going to stay in the industry or not."

Couture says the fact that producers can only market hogs under contract through Maple Leaf if they are validated under CQA encouraged stepped registrations in Manitoba last year.

However, she says, the difficult price cycle in 2003 has made things tight and an extra levy now in place is also prompting those who have not registered to look closely at their future.

For Farmscape.Ca, I'm Bruce Cochrane.