Farmscape for June 24, 2020

A partner in Polar Pork Farms says a cull sow slaughtering plant in Moose Jaw would help improve Canadian food security.
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 smaller cull sow slaughtering plants in Manitoba and the larger ones in the United States are jammed to capacity and can't handle the cull sows coming to market now so a plant in Saskatchewan, capable of handling local supplies, would ease that congestion and probably draw animals from Alberta and Manitoba as well.

Clip-Florian Possberg-Polar Pork Farms:
When you move a lot of product across the border into the U.S. there's always a border risk.
From our consumer's point of view, a lot of cull sows end up in sausage, smokeys and weaners and all of those types of products.
Just having more supply of the meats that go into those types of food creates an extra bit of security for us.
Of course we have plants like Harvest Meats in Yorkton that does a lot of processing, value adding.
I'm sure they're getting a lot of their product that goes into their meats from outside the province and maybe even outside the country.
So this really creates an opportunity to supply primary products for a lot of the food that shows up on our meat shelf.

Possberg notes, in addition to improved food security in Canada, a Saskatchewan based cull sow slaughtering plant would help reduce the risk of cross border disease transmission and reduce the level of stress on the animals associated with long distance transport.
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Bruce Cochrane.

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