Farm-Scape, Episode 2174

The Canadian Pork Council has identified Korea and Japan as key markets with which the pork industry would like to see Canada aggressively pursue bilateral free trade arrangements.

Earlier this week a coalition of nine Canadian agricultural groups, including the Canadian Pork Council, applauded transport minister David Emerson's aggressive approach to negotiations for bilateral trade agreements and his commitment to accelerate efforts to clinch new trade deals.

CPC President Clare Schlegel notes increasingly our competition is working at bilateral arrangements to gain preferred market access so the coalition is absolutely behind the government's efforts in the bilateral platform as well as the multilateral front.

"Certainly we would encourage the government to be aggressive and prioritize the Korean conversations that are currently happening. Korea is a high valued market that would be looking for, perhaps, chilled pork from Canada and we know that the US is also in discussion with them and so we would like to at least maintain equal access to the United States in that market.

Certainly discussions with Japan would be important to us. We understand that there are early discussions happening there.

The Japanese market, of course, in recent times, has been our second most important export market to the United States so that's certainly critical. It's critical to us that the Chileans, that the Mexicans, that the Americans, that the Europeans do not have a preferential access in that market."

Schlegel notes multilateral negotiations at the WTO remain crucial but, with 148 countries involved, progress takes time thus several countries are working on bilateral arrangements.

He suggests a good example would be NAFTA where Mexico, Canada and the United States agreed reduce tariffs in a trading region and trade among those three countries has increased tremendously.

For Farmscape.Ca, I'm Bruce Cochrane.