Farmscape for June 23, 2020

A partner in Polar Pork Farms says there is considerable support among Saskatchewan's pork producers for a proposed cull sow slaughtering facility in Moose Jaw.
British Columbia based Donald's Fine Foods, which operates the Thunder Creek pork processing plant in Moose Jaw, has acquired the former XL beef processing plant in Moose Jaw and is examining the feasibility of converting that facility into a cull sow slaughtering plant.
Florian Possberg, a partner in Polar Pork Farms, says there's a constraint in the number of animals that can be processed in the United States right now and the opportunity to bring that capacity to Saskatchewan makes a lot of sense.

Clip-Florian Possberg-Polar Pork Farms:
I think Donald's sees an opportunity to have a plant that's in conjunction with their current plant makes a lot of sense for them.
I know we would benefit, our business.
Just the idea of biosecurity, not having to take our trucks and trailers into areas that have things like PED and PRRS and those kind of highly contagious infectious and very negatively economic diseases.
Although we do a good job of washing and baking and doing things to the trailers for biosecurity, obviously, if you can stay close to and keep your equipment in areas where those diseases aren't known to exist, that would be a great help.
Currently, because of the problems in the hog industry, plants that do slaughter hogs, there's a couple smaller ones in Manitoba and a number of bigger ones in the United States, they are just jammed full.
They can't handle the numbers that are coming to market currently and so, if we had a plant here that could take care of our supply, particularly at this time, that would be a great benefit.

Possberg says the creation of a Saskatchewan based cull sow slaughtering plant also offers advantages in terms of animal welfare and food security.
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Bruce Cochrane.

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