Members attending Manitoba Pork Council's annual general meeting Tuesday in Winnipeg passed a by-law directing the board of directors to proceed with a series of structural changes designed to keep the organization current with changes in the pork industry.

Council chairman Karl Kynoch explains, due to the fact that the pork industry has down-sized, producers felt it was appropriate to down-size the board of directors so an independent committee outside of council was formed to consult with producers and recommend changes.

Karl Kynoch-Manitoba Pork Council

We've seen a huge amount of contraction and, with all of the crisis in the industry, a lot of the challenges the producers have been facing, we've seen a lot of producers drop off or just get out of the business so there's less and less producers out in the geographics all the time.

That's where a lot of producers felt that we needed to do the same as what producers have done.

They've down-sized so they felt the board needed to down-size also just to stay up with the times and that.

There will be a few less meetings out in the country now.

We'll have three less geographical district meetings to do.

You'll also see three less directors at the board table so now you'll be paying a few less directors to attend the everyday meetings that we do, or the board meetings.

It will lower our cost a little bit.

It won't be a huge amount.

At the end of the day we didn't achieve all of the things we had set out to do through the re-structuring but this is one of the steps going forward to change and try to stay current with the times.

We'll have to see from here what our next steps will be, maybe two or three years down the road.

Mr Kynoch notes to accommodate the amalgamation of districts, instead of having two delegates in affected districts up for election, all six will be up for election.

He says that will happen during district meetings in November and the changes will take effect following the organization's annual general meeting in April of 2010.