Farmscape for July 5, 2018

The Canadian Pork Council says research related to animal health, animal welfare, nutrition, advances in building and equipment design and pork quality will be among the pork sector's top priorities as it moves forward on research over the next five years.
The federal government in partnership with the pork sector have allocated 18.5 million dollars through the Canadian Agricultural Partnership's AgriScience Research Cluster Program to Swine Innovation Porc to fund research over the next five years.
John Ross, the Executive Director of the Canadian Pork Council, says the program will ensure important research will move forward.

Clip-John Ross-Canadian Pork Council:
The priorities are consistent over time as we go forward, nutrition, feed efficiency.
Can we raise these hogs in a more efficient manner.
Animal welfare is obviously a big ticket item for us and a big ticket item not only for us but for Canadians at large and in our consumers globally so we have some projects over animal care.
We have projects around building and equipment.
How do we do it more efficiently?
We are large consumers of energy and if we can more efficiently use that energy, that speaks for our cost of production.
Obviously pork quality comes into play.
We have to produce a product that's well received by consumers, not only in terms of nutrition but in also in terms of eating quality.
Then, perhaps even more important that others would be animal health.
We are very cognizant in Canada of the challenges to our industry related to animal health and certainly that's extraordinarily important in the context we see now where we're seeing increasing pressure on stewardship of antimicrobials.
These things line up.
Is there more effective ways to maintain the health of our animals and as such be a little bit more stewards in our use of antimicrobials.
Those are the key priorities for the program.

Ross says swine Innovation Porc and the funding that comes into from the provincial organizations matched by Agriculture Canada is a real demonstration of the ability of industry and government to work together.
For Farmscape.Ca, I'm Bruce Cochrane.

       *Farmscape is a presentation of Sask Pork and Manitoba Pork