Given the reduction in the number of swine producers in Manitoba a committee formed about two and a half years ago recommended downsizing Manitoba Pork Council's board of directors.

Pork Council Chair Karl Kynoch says over the past 25 years the number of hog producers in Manitoba has fallen from about 35 hundred to about 750.

Karl Kynoch-Manitoba Pork Council

We used to run 14 districts, eight of those being geographical districts and then we had our production districts and the Hutterite Brethren.

We're now reducing those districts from 14 down to 11 so we are eliminating three of the geographical districts.

We're taking those down from eight down to five just due to the fact of not as many producers across the land.

It will have some impact definitely at the board as it will also reduce the amount of directors from 14 down to 11 so you are going to have less directors to pick from to deal with the day to day stuff that we need to have some producer representation attending.

We run a lot of programmes there.

We basically deal with everything except marketing a hog.

We have a public affairs division which deals with public relations and promotion of product, we have a research committee that deals with that.

We do a lot with government relations.

We'll meet with the government, different departments there on a regular basis, to discuss conservation regulations or to discuss with the agriculture minister some assistance for producers, this type of stuff we deal with that.

We also do a lot with trade and trade advocacy in the US so there is a lot of areas that we cover.

Another area we cover, we've worked on cash advances also.

We try to get some interest free money into producers' pockets.

As a producer you basically won't see any change.

We've done the reductions inside and the services will continue to move forward as they have in the past.

The change in operating structure officially takes place this afternoon (13 April 2010) at he conclusion of the business session Manitoba Pork Council's annual general meeting underway today in Winnipeg.