Pork producers are pressing for answers to outstanding questions surrounding pending mandatory U.S. Country of Origin Labelling.

Manitoba Pork Council Chair Karl Kynoch says, with the scheduled implementation date just months away, producers in the U.S. and Canada need to know what will be required under COOL so they can make informed decisions.

Karl Kynoch-Manitoba Pork Council

The problem is that some of the U.S. packers have said, come September, that they are going to not continue to accept Canadian origin pigs so what's been happening due to the country of origin labeling and the uncertainty of that, there's been some U.S. producers that have been breaking their contracts or not renewing their contracts.

This has actually backed up some of the weanlings in Canada here.

But I will say at the same time there's a large amount of producers in the U.S. that are still honoring those contracts and it's become a huge concern to them as, even after feeding these pigs, they don't know if they're going to be able to sell them.

The urgency, the thing is at the pigs that are being born right now are going to go to market after the September 30 deadline coming this fall.

There's sow bred, there's pigs being born every day that are just not sure if there's going to be a home for them later on when they reach maturity and are ready to go into the markets.

The uncertainty of the COOL legislation needs to get sorted out immediately so packers and producers can move forward and do what we do best and that's produce food and care for animals and create employment to benefit all North Americans.

I would ask that the senators and congressmen get this sorted out immediately.

We have people starving in the world and here we have people talking about euthanizing pigs.

This goes against everything the farmers stand for.

Kynoch stresses farmers are good at producing food and caring for animals and they need to get this political stuff out of the way to allow them to continue to do what they do best.