so much for value added

[grassfarmer]

Agree on the pork quality issue - or should say our customers do. We marketed some pasture raised Large Black hogs last year to our grass-fed beef customers and the response was phenominal. They had a clean taste, not a hog barn stink taste. We doubled our orders for this year with no marketing effort. The customer is always right - unfortunately industrial agriculture still doesn't want to listen.

Agree that this doesn't help the "pork industry" - but rather like the "beef industry" how worth saving is it? We are in the food production business and it's time we got back in touch with our real paymasters - the consumer not Governments, not multinational packers, not retailers.

[Hopperbin]

No multi million dollar hog operations?
Is there a hog operation that is not multi million dollar? Ditto for us farmers these days but when a hog operation can go bankrupt and the owner buys a new half ton and a new million dollar house in the same year after bankruptsy , not sure what to say here.

[Hopperbin]

Is it all about jobs and an extra market for our grains? That definately has been a boost to the community.

[parsley]

There is:

1.Odour issue in so much of the pork.

Not only an occassional whiff of "boar" odor, in other words weanlings that were not castrated properly or perhaps not at all, but there is often a foul pig barn smell to the meat. I drive 2 hours from home to get good pork. Sweet smelling pork.

2. There is what i call a fester-globule in segments of the butchered meat that I have bought in stores. A person has to cut them out if you are going to use it at all. It is a bad color, it looks inflamed, it is not normal, and it is reoccurring continually. Not huge...maybe two inches usually. A glob that needs to be removed if you're sane.

I quit buying in the large stores because of these two factors.

If you are a cook, you notice. Pars

[parsley]

Good for you for listening to the consumer. You will have a market for your food.

Growing and raising food that no one wants to buy will mean buyers/eaters will turn to other countries.

[Hopperbin]

Funny that some people joke about Chinese eating cat dog or monkey. Make some friends of new Chinese people working in pig barns and you can have all the pork you can eat, apparently they don't like it so much. Not just talk it is fact.

[parsley]

It's not the way the pigs are handled. The cysty-lumpy-bruisey globules are not near the surface of the skin. They are in either the flesh or fat. So that elimminates getting bashed by equipment or some such thing.

So it could be either the genetics of the pig. Or the feed.

Some cultures eat grubs. Others dogs. Others pigs. Some eat camel. Some horse. Some ate humans at one time. Nothing new here.

pars

[sumdumguy]

There were fewer problems with pork before all the real "entrepreneurs" got in the trough. A lot of small farms had a few porkers rutting up the yard, then along came the big boys and kicked them in the A. Now, lets protect them.

Furthermore, the odd smell to pork now, I bought nice vaccuum packed back ribs at the supermarket, started cooking them and couldn't almost walk into my house for 3 days. Weird Smell.

[Fransisco]

Let me put the $75 million into context. In a normal year the Canadian pork business generates around $5 billion in annual farm gate income. It's a lot more if you add in the processing side of things.

As far as bailouts go (and I am not in favour of bailouts) this is a drop in the bucket.

I agree, running to the taxpayer for these kinds of things no matter what the industry is, is not a good idea.

The problem is not a sudden increase in supposedly "stinky" pork. It is oversupply, demand simply did not keep up with ever increasing supply.

Last year it looked like new demand from places like China was going to save the day. But that sudden surge in demand was shortlived as the Chinese have been able to raise their own production levels this year.

The marketplace is in the process of flushing the excess supply out of the system. Prices won't improve until this happens. And unfortunately it's all taking a lot longer than anyone expected.

[parsley]

Important to carefully examine demand's slide.

That's my point and it's a loaded point, I realize.

All countries should be running to Canada to buy pork, gleeful, (think how sought after Canadian bacon used to be) just as I drive to my butcher two hours away.

When consumers tried to tell GM that their cars were shoddily built, and Toyota were building sturdy cars, GM was not prepared to listen. Period.


Yup.

[charliep]

Perhaps the original point is that all industries have a supply chain and something that impact one part of the supply chain eventually hurts everyone. On the car analogy, there have been a lot of component manufacturers (seats, mufflers, whatever) that have been severely impacted by the down turn in the auto manufacturing industry. The drive to efficiencies by the automakers will have significant impact on suppliers downstream. Suspect some of the same thing will happen on the livestock feed side.

The point in the first post is the reduction in meat demand (reasons have been given) will eventually impact you as a grain farmer. The lag time will be a year with this period started last spring.

[Fransisco]

The low price for pork is not just a Canadian phenomenon. It is global. And in many parts of the world is actually much worse than it is here.

Though at a certain point it probably doesn't matter if you've had a couple of less kicks to the nads than the next guy.