In mid-February the Farm Products Council of Canada held public hearings into the proposed creation of a Canadian Pork Promotion and Research Agency.

The agency would administer the collection and distribution of a national levy on the sale of pork, including pork imported from other countries, primarily the United States.

Swine Innovation Porc Chair Stewart Cressman says funds Swine Innovation currently collects from industry are leveraged, where 1 dollar gets 8 dollars in research activity and the additional funding generated through the national levy would certainly grow that research pie.

Stewart Cressman-Swine Innovation Porc:

Some of the things that we have and will continue to do is improvements in efficiency and production efficiency largely focused on nutrition both at the finishing pig and in the nursery pig.

We'd as well look at some things that relate to improvement in health and, as we've seen with what's happened in PED and the threat that was at our doorstep, some of the things that maybe able to continue to be done with protecting our industry from a production limiting disease like PED.

Although it isn't a foreign animal disease, it is a production limiting one and PRRS is likely the big one that we all talk about as a disease, so I think ways there.

There's some new work on vaccine adjuvants.

Vaccines are some things that prevent disease and likely highest on our list is looking at alternatives to antibiotics.

Mr Cressman says this isn't blue sky research, this is trying to bring benefits very quickly to the industry.