World Pork Expo in Des Moines, Iowa, is the largest annual pork industry trade show in North America.

A delegation representing Manitoba Pork Council will be on hand to meet with representatives of the various US national and state pork organizations.

Pork Council chair Karl Kynoch says the goal is to promote trade and improved trade relations between the two industries.

Karl Kynoch-Manitoba Pork Council

There's a number of issues that are facing us right now.

One of them front and centre is Country of Origin Labelling.

We're probably getting to within a month or month and a half of hearing the ruling on that.

That's a topic that is of concern, it's had a lot of effect on our trade.

Another issue that's big and it's been front and centre for just about a year now is the cost of feed.

The cost of feed is affecting the producers on both sides of the border here in Canada and also in the US.

A lot of the people are very concerned with the ethanol industry taking a lot of the feed and using it to turn it into fuel and there's a lot of concern there about making sure that we have enough feed for livestock so feed is another issue.

Then again the trade of the weanling flow going south and having them fed out in the US and that so we really need to work on alleviating any concerns with those partnerships.

Again we want to make sure that we're seen down there and we have a lot of side meetings set up to meet with various contacts in the US and discuss a varieties of issues all the way from the feed issues to the trade to the Country of Origin Labelling and then there's always other issues that come to the forefront so basically it's to keep up the relationship and keep up the open communication between the producers on both sides of the border.

Mr Kynoch says, overall, trade relations the Canadian and US industries are a lot better than they were eight to ten years ago.