Cull Breeding Swine Program Feed Changes Applauded
CANADA - Canadian pork producers are applauding changes to the Federal Cull Breeding Swine Program that will allow participants to recover more of their feed costs, writes Bruce Cochrane.The Federal Cull Breeding swine Program offers producers who agree to de-populate breeding barns and leave them empty of breeding stock for a minimum of three years 225 dollars per culled animal.
Producers also qualify for a feed allowance to help offset the cost of feeding designated animals until they can be slaughtered.
Canadian Pork Council executive director Martin Rice notes federal agriculture minister Gerry Ritz has approved an increase in the feed allowance.
Martin Rice-Canadian Pork Council
With this program there's an amount of 225 dollars per animal and, on top of that, there was an allowance given for feed because it was seen that, once a producer had applied, that there would still be some time that they would have to take care of the animals.
Initially the allowance given for feed was 15 days but, with the reality of a program that had never run before, the finding of options to have animals slaughtered and taken care of outside of the normal distribution system, some of those opportunities had to be found first of all and other situations arose that producers were not able to market animals within the 15 days.
The decision by Mr. Ritz is that the allowance is moved up to 30 days from 15, and that's an additional dollar per day for those animals, and then in some special circumstances up to 45 days.
Rice says about 550 producers across from Canada have applied to cull approximately 120 thousand sows or about eight percent of the national breeding herd, just short of the ten percent target.
The September 1 application deadline passed earlier this week, producers have until November 30 to complete their cull and until January 15, 2009 to submit their documentation.