Introduced in April, the cull breeding swine program was developed by the federal government to reduce Canada's breeding herd.

To avoid market disruptions meat from animals culled under program may not enter the commercial food distribution chain but it is allowed to be donated for use by food banks.

Saskatchewan Pork Development Board policy analyst Mark Ferguson says, once the final numbers have been crunched, the cost of processing donated animals will be close to the 440 thousand dollars budgeted by the province.

Mark Ferguson-Saskatchewan Pork Development Board

We've used five different provincially inspected abattoirs in the province.

We basically contacted all the provincially inspected plants and asked them they wanted to participate and if they did and if they had sufficient capacity to meet our needs we were able to utilize them.

The five different plants were Western Prime Meat Processors in Weyburn, Superior Meats in Swift Current, Prairieland Meat Packers in Avonlea, Larson's Abattoir at Leross and Drake Meats Processors at Drake.

We processed nearly 23 hundred sows under the food bank program and I think it's been just over 500 thousand pounds of pork delivered.

We're still tallying the final numbers but that's what we believe we've sent there.

I think it's been a success.

We've given the less fortunate people in Saskatchewan a good supply of protein and nutritious meat for the next year and I think we can all feel very good about that.

It's also shown that we a good partnership with the provincial government and with the food banks and hopefully that can carry forward into the future.

Ferguson says just over 40 of the province's pork producers have participated in the cull breeding swine program and, by the time it wraps up, will have reduced the province's total breeding herd by about ten percent.