The 75 million dollar Hog Farm Transition Program is part of a comprehensive federal pork industry restructuring plan and is designed to assist hog producers who are prepared to idle production facilities for a minimum of three years.

The original October 28th tendering deadline for the first round of bidding has been extended by one week to 14 November.

Canadian Pork Council public relations manager Gary Stordy says producers who submitted their registration forms prior to October 23rd will be contacted by program administrators with follow-up questions or they'll receive their tendering packages by fax, email or courier service.

Gary Stordy-Canadian Pork Council

What happened, to be up front, is that applications were being sent in.

Some of them were not complete, they required some follow-up.

That took some extra time but also producers anxious and concerned about the status of their application were calling in, leaving messages and all of this essentially snowballed.

To kind of set things straight, this first auction will not be for the full 75 million dollars.

It'll be a much lower tender, it's probably going to be in the range of ten million dollars and it has been postponed or delayed until next week.

That should give plenty of time for producers to receive their packages and send it back to the administrators.

Just so that producers are aware they are able to fax in their bids to the program administrators and then follow up with the original paper or signed copy after that.

Mr Stordy notes bidders will be informed within a few days of the close of tendering whether or not their bids have been accepted and those who were unsuccessful will be sent bid forms for the second round which is tentatively scheduled for 18 November.