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Canadian Meat Council Urges Ottawa to Support 11 Member TPP
Allan Schlachter - Canadian Meat Council

Farmscape for November 6, 2017

The Canadian Meat Council is calling on Ottawa to do all it can to accelerate the implementation of an 11 member Trans-Pacific Partnership.
In its submission to public consultations on Canada's discussions with the remaining members of the Trans-Pacific Partnership, the Canadian Meat Council is calling on the Government of Canada to express its support for the earliest possible completion, ratification and implementation” of the agreement.
Canadian Meat Council Director of Beef and Veal  Allan Schlachter says the council strongly supported implementation of the original TPP and, with the withdrawal of the United States, it's even more supportive of moving that free trade agreement forward.

Clip-Allan Schlachter-Canadian Meat Council:
It's important because of the significance, especially of Japan as the key interest there.
It represents 20 percent of our current export value globally.
What's changed is simply that there are other markets that have concluded or are concluding free trade agreements with Japan and so we can not afford to be left behind.
Notably would be the European Union.
They have an agreement in principle for an FTA and so, if that were to take effect before we were able to implement and be a part of the TPP, we would very quickly find ourselves shut out of that market.
With any trade negotiation there's a phase in period and so we would become not competitive very quickly.
If you look at that 20 percent of our export values into that single market that would have significant impacts on our entire industry.
We have packers who we represent but also the entire value chain right down to farmers and those people we employ.
The Canadian Meat Council is the largest component of the food processing sector as far as employment.
We employ 65 thousand workers so, if you were to imagine a 20 percent drop of exports, that would have a significant impact on those plants  but more so the places where they're located which are often rural.

Schlachter says it's important that Canada sign off on this agreement as soon as possible.
For Farmscape.Ca, I'm Bruce Cochrane.


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