In mid-February Manitoba Pork Council mailed a detailed questionnaire to the province's pork producers and is making the same survey available on line in an effort to gather more information about their operations.

Manitoba Pork Council industry services coordinator Arnie Thorlacius says, on average, the survey takes about an hour to get through but it can depending on the number of sites and the number of barns a producer has.

Arnie Thorlacius-Manitoba Pork Council

The survey is serving a couple of different roles.

To begin with we're collecting some information for the new premises registration regulation that the province announced so we're confirming the data that we have on hand for that so that we know that what we turn over for the premise registration will be correct.

We're also collecting information on more general issues.

We're asking producers to provide us information on things like manure management, we're asking them about their feed situation, we're also asking them how their marketing methods have changes over the time so we can get a sense of how the industry is evolving in the province.

We sent out the survey to anyone who'd submitted levy to Pork Council in the last five years so we mailed out just short of 900 booklets.

Currently we've received back about 262 of those so we're about 30 per cent returned and whether or not we catch anyone that we hadn't received any levy from in the past, we won't know that until they contact us.

Mr Thorlacius says the questionnaire was sent out just over two months ago and the hope is to have the survey completed as quickly as possible.

He stresses, with the exception of questions pertaining to premise registration, the majority of the data collected through the survey will be used only by employees of Manitoba Pork Council and only aggregate numbers will be released.