A Manitoba Pork Council delegation is in Minneapolis this week for the Minnesota Pork Congress and to meet with U.S. industry representatives as part of an ongoing effort to promote trade advocacy.

Pork Council Chair Karl Kynoch says the number one issue in that state is Mandatory US Country of Origin Labelling and number two is the low prices in the industry and all of the red ink.

Karl Kynoch-Manitoba Pork Council

There's a lot of producers right now that have been notified from some of the packing plants in the US that come September '08 that they're not going to continue to buy pigs that originated out of Canada.

So producers here are having to start and make the decision do they continue buying pigs here in February.

Then again in Canada the same thing the same thing is a concern.

Are they going to be able to keep shipping their hogs down here so we're really down to crunch time on this Country of Origin Labelling and that's just a huge concern and causing producers to make some huge business decisions.

I think what would really help this is if we could get to voluntary.

The big concern is right now the retailers in the US do not want to have two labels sitting in their store.

What we need to be able to get on the product is a dual label that would say could contain product out of Canada and the US.

We had some meetings here.

We actually met with senate and congress representatives.

We met over at the Canadian consulate with these people and I'll tell you, they were really surprised and concerned over the impact that we were pointing out that this is going to have on producers right here in Minnesota, that in fact, this Country of Origin Labelling could shut down a lot of these small farms right here in Minnesota and I think that really touched home.

We were really pleased with the meetings we had but there's a lot of work going forward that we need to do to work this out yet.

Kynoch says relations between the two industries remain strong.

He says there is a good understanding of the issues on both sides of the border and the two industries are united on the Mandatory COOL this issue.