Long Term Vision for Sustainability Unveiled
CANADA - Manitoba Pork Council has unveiled, on behalf of the province's 700 pork producers, a vision for the long term sustainability of the pork industry in Manitoba, writes Bruce Cochrane.The plan "Embracing a Sustainable Future" was released yesterday in Winnipeg.
It took three years to develop and contains 82 committments covering a range of issues including green farming, odor and farm location, caring for animals, farm and worker safety, investing in research, education and awareness, food safety, trade relations and social responsibility to help ensure the sustainability pork production in Manitoba.
Manitoba Pork Council chair Karl Kynoch says its hoped the document will foster improved communications between pork producers and the general public.
Karl Kynoch-Manitoba Pork Council
We've been faced with a lot of challenges over the last years from animal activists, from environmentalists and different groups of people and have spent a lot of time being reactive to these issues.
What we wanted to do with this plan is get something out there that we can hang our hat on and be a little bit more proactive moving forward.
The other thing is we also want to educate the public with this plan.
Hog producers do a lot of good things and we've failed in the past to let the public know all the good things that we do.
In this plan what we've done is listed the things that we're doing, things we're working on and things we're planning on doing, so more or less a full disclosure just to let the public know exactly what our plans are.
We want the public to look at this plan, to go to the web site and look at the plan and educate themselves on the good things that we do.
At the end of the day we want the same things that a lot of the public does.
We care about the environment, we care about the animals and we want to be able to leave and environment here that is going to be good for our children and our grandchildren down the road.
Mr Kynoch encourages the public to take the time to go to web site to educate themselves and look at what pork producers are actually doing.
For more information on Embracing a Sustainable Future visit manitobapork.com.