In light of a series of unprecedented challenges facing the Canadian hog industry delegates attending Manitoba Pork Council's 2013 annual general meeting on Wednesday (10 April) in Winnipeg passed a resolution calling on the organization along with its counterparts in other provinces to organize an emergency meeting with all Canadian industry players, producers, processors, retailers and government to find long term solutions to the crisis.

Manitoba agriculture minister Ron Kostyshyn suggests all pork industry stakeholders need to come together to develop longer term strategies to deal with the situation.

Ron Kostyshyn-Agriculture Minister Manitoba

I think what we need to do is look at the players right from the producers all the way right through to the retail stores.

Living in a perfect world, is there an opportunity to look at some long term stability whether its two years, five years or ten years down the road because unfortunately the livestock sector tends to go through these cycles and unusually the pork industry has been somewhat challenged in the last five to six years with the unusual cycle so is there an opportunity to sit at a round table discussion with the processors and the retail stores possibly and maybe indirect businesses in the hog industry, is there an opportunity to create some kind of a fund that can assist the producers in the situation we're in today that we don't have a reoccurrence in it and to provide good clean safe food for the consumers of Manitoba and western Canada.

Mr Kostyshyn says whether it's the beef industry or the pork industry we go through these cycles so maybe we should be looking for opportunities to set aside dollars for a rainy day fund from which producers can draw when faced by high feed costs or other challenges.