Swine Dollars

Tuesday, 17 June 2014 at 15:54

Vice President of the Association Gordon Waters, Oxford MP Dave MacKenzie

Oxford MP Dave MacKenzie makes major funding announcement in Woodstock

WOODSTOCK - The Federal government is injecting more than one million dollars over two years to help boost international recognition of Canada's purebred swine genetics.

Oxford MP Dave MacKenzie was in Woodstock Tuesday to make the funding to the Canadian Swine Exporters Association.

MacKenzie says the pork industry is important to our whole country when you start looking at the value added to a lot of the pork products and the trade that we are developing around the world.

"When we look at the Free Trade Agreements that we've been signing with the European Union, just recently with South Korea, and a lot of the other Countries, maybe smaller, but they all respect the Canadian value of our food and they all look for more of it. It's just a good announcement."

MacKenzie says these people are the best when it comes to exporting both their pork and their genetics and this money will give them the opportunity to get into a lot of those markets in trade shows and so on.

MacKenzie says we have a big pork industry in Oxford County which will benefit greatly from this money.

"Probably some of the bigger swine genetics people for instance, that's a big part of the pork industry here but also a big part of the pork industry is pork itself, not just the genetics. We have been able to make those deals to open the markets and now we need the product to be able to get into them by having buyers in those countries buy our pork."

Vice President of the Association Gordon Waters says this money allows them to continue their efforts promoting Canadian swine genetics internationally.

"Certainly because there is a lot of competition with the United States and Europe it allows us to be a little more cost effective in our efforts. It's great to see that Agriculture Canada and Agri-Food is still supporting the swine industry and hopefully we will be a stronger brand internationally because of it."

Waters says international currencies make it difficult for Canada to compete in many ways because of how our dollar stakes against the American dollar.

He says the funds will support trade missions and allow them to fly to different countries to develop new markets.

The money is part of the federal government's Growing Forward 2 initiative.