Farmscape for June 17, 2008  (Episode 2879)

Pork Marketing Canada has unveiled a new label designed to make it easier for Canadian consumers to identify and choose Canadian pork at their grocery stores.

Pork Marketing Canada is partnership involving provincial pork industry organizations across Canada working together on different areas including health and nutrition, food service and the retail sector.

The voluntary "Canadian Pork" label is being offered to retailers across the country to help Canadians identify and choose Canadian pork.

Pork Marketing Canada manager Roy Kruse says, while surveys have shown Canadian consumers would prefer to support Canadian pork producers, up until now they've had no way to tell whether the pork they find at their local meat counter is imported or is Canadian.

Clip-Roy Kruse-Pork Marketing Canada 

A study by the Canadian Federation of Agriculture found that 90 percent of consumers felt that Canadian grown product should be easily identified in all grocery stores and further to that 95 percent of them said they would prefer to buy Canadian product.

We have a lot of imported product coming into the country in the last year.

Factoring into that is the Canadian dollar, the high feed grain price and high input costs has put a lot of pressure on our producers.

So we hope that Canadians will respond and help producers.

The agriculture industry, the industry's farm gate totals around three billion dollars and accounts for about 100 thousand jobs in the country so it's quite a huge industry.

We know that we have a very high quality product.

We have a very good Canadian Quality Assurance program that's based on Hazard Analysis Critical Control Points so we know our product is very good and we're hoping that Canadians will respond positively.

The label, which bears a Canadian flag and the words "Canadian Pork-Porc Canadien" is easily identifiable and has started appearing in retail stores throughout the country.

Kruse says there are more retailers joining the program every day.

He encourages Canadians, if they don't see the labels in their retail meat case, to ask their local butcher where their product is coming from.

For Farmscape.Ca, I'm Bruce Cochrane.

       *Farmscape is a presentation of Sask Pork and Manitoba Pork Council