Farmscape for July 19, 2011   (Episode 3626)

Manitoba Pork Council says upgrades planned for the Hylife Foods hog slaughtering plant will allow Hylife to expand its markets, increase the demand for hogs, create jobs, and generate huge economic spin-offs.

Last week the federal government announced Hylife Foods, a subsidiary of Hylife, will receive 10 million dollars under the Slaughter Improvement Program to expand the cooler and cutting areas of its Neepawa hog slaughtering plant and purchase new equipment.

Manitoba Pork Council chair Karl Kynoch says the upgrades will make that plant very viable for the future.

Clip-Karl Kynoch-Manitoba Pork Council:
The upgrades for Hylife will improve their access to the world markets, it's going to allow them to develop a lot of products further and continue to develop very high quality products that they can ship around the world.

It also expands the market and the demand for the live product coming from the farmers here right in Manitoba so that's very positive for the both.

The spin-offs for the area will be huge also because it's going to add another 250 jobs into that area right there right around the Neepawa area and again, adding that to the 13 thousand jobs already produced in Manitoba, it's going to be a very positive spin-off and huge to the economy.

We produce some of the highest quality products here in Manitoba.

Some of our products here we feel have the highest food safety standards in the world.

When you can put this kind of an investment into a plant it makes sure that we're going to stay right on the leading edge of technology and producing very high quality products to be exported around the world.

Because I've got to tell you the world is a very small place and you have to be pretty much a leader of the industry all the time just to stay on top of all of the demands and that will allow Hylife to do that and to be able to access some very good markets.

Kynoch acknowledges, while Hylife produces a lot of its own hogs, the Manitoba governments extension of its moratorium on new hog barn construction or expansion the to entire province is expected to drive another 100 family hogs farms out of business and make it a challenge for the processing sector to access adequate supplies of hogs.

He suspects the plants will have to look at bringing in hogs from the U.S. and more hogs from Saskatchewan.

For Farmscape.Ca, I'm Bruce Cochrane.

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