Early last month, following the release of the Manitoba Clean Environment Commission report on the environmental sustainability of Manitoba's hog industry, the province announced it will impose permanent moratoriums on hog industry expansion in Southeastern Manitoba, the Red River Valley and the Interlake.

To rally support for a reversal of that decision, Manitoba Pork Council has invited the leaders of farm and rural organizations to attend a summit meeting next week in Winnipeg to discuss the situation.

Pork Council Chair Karl Kynoch says several groups have expressed concern and offered their support.

Karl Kynoch-Manitoba Pork Council

The Manitoba Chambers of Commerce has come on side, Keystone Ag has come on side and a number if other groups have been calling us wanting to know what can they do to help support us because they're really concerned.

They've seen the hog industry singled out and targeted and becoming a scapegoat for lake Winnipeg.

Now they're wondering who's next.

The grains industry uses fertilizers, a lot of other livestock industries, they have nutrients to spread too so we have decided to call together a summit meeting.

We're going to be asking all the heads of commodity groups and industry supporters to come together.

We're going to do this on April 10 and we want to discuss all the concerns.

We want to hear the concerns of the other groups also.

We're going to pull together all the commodity groups and look at their concerns, look at our concerns and develop a plan of action to move forward and hopefully get the government to overturn the moratorium and then all the groups would like to probably see what they could do to move forward with positive things to do with the environment.

The summit is scheduled for Thursday April 10.

Kynoch notes representatives of Pork Council have a meeting scheduled with Premier Gary Doer in Mid-April and would like to have the support businesses and organizations from across Manitoba.