Representatives of Manitoba Pork Council will be in Minneapolis on 19 to 21 January to meet with pork industry and government officials and to take part in Minnesota Pork Congress 2010 and in Des Moines on 25 to 28 January for meetings and to attend the 2010 Iowa Pork Congress.

The goal of the mission is to discuss issues of common concern including animal welfare, the over supply of hogs that continues to depress prices and Mandatory US Country of Origin Labelling.

Manitoba Pork Council Chair, Karl Kynoch, says that while relations between the Canadian and US pork industries have been good for quite a few years, Mandatory COOL has created a great deal of disruption.

Karl Kynoch – Manitoba Pork Council

Country of Origin Labelling has been a huge issue.

The thing is with that, we've seen a lot of damage done by that already as where some of our producers have been pushed right out of business just due to not being able to find access to packers in the U.S. for Canadian born pigs.

It can be really interesting to see where they're at on that at the moment.

But I will say that our Canadian producers are starting to push back to the councils and that and they'd like to see Canada implementing some of the same rules.

If Country of Origin Labelling doesn't disappear in the U.S. and ease up a lot of producers here in Canada think that maybe it's time Canada does that and some other countries.

It'll be interesting to hear what the American producers have to say about that and some of the leaders there so I would imagine that we're going to have a lot of interesting conversation on COOL here going forward.

Mr Kynoch observes opinion on Mandatory COOL in the US has been mixed.

He says there are a lot of US producers who have been pushed out of business because they have been unable to buy Canadian weaners and ship the finished hogs to US packing plants but there are others who feel restricted access to the US market is increasing prices.