The Rural Voice, 1988-11, Page 69PERTH
County Pork Producers NEWSLETTER
Gordon Jack, R. R. 1, Newton
595-8422
• The Rural Voice is provided to Perth
County Pork Producers by the PCPPA
MARKETING SEMINAR
The days when hog producers could
shove their pigs out of the barn into a
truck and forget about them are long
gone, as everyone is well aware. How
well, or how poorly, we "market" our
hogs has ramifications from the trucker
right on down the marketing chain to the
ultimate consumer and eventually has a
direct effect on the net balance in pro-
ducers' bank accounts.
In the way that producers are always
looking for ways to improve production,
we should also be looking for ways to
improve our "marketing" to better sat-
isfy our consumers in the marketing
chain. The Producer Services Commit-
tee of the PCPPA is organizing a semi-
nar which will provide producers with a
lot of timely marketing information to
enable producers to focus in on increas-
ing pork quality in several ways.
In order to have adequate time to
present the information and for a good
discussion, it was necessary to have the
seminar over two days. The first day
will be, tentatively, in the second week
of January and the second clay will be
two weeks later.
The emphasis will be on increasing
the quality of pork we produce. Topics
to be covered include PSE, soma-
totropins (growth -promoting hor-
mones) and pork quality, the effect of
whole roasted soybeans on meat quality,
drug residues, hog flow, the quality
requirements of our export markets, and
a look at our grading system.
It is planned that as many segments
of the marketing chain will be involved
in the presentations as possible. It is
shaping up to be an extremely interest-
ing seminar with information that can be
put to immediate use as well as generate
discussion with possible longer-term
implications.
As details are confirmed, producers
will be notified via this newsletter and
OPIIP.
PLOWING MATCH
The participation of the PCPPA in
this year's IPM was a tremendous suc-
cess. Over the five days, about 9,000
68 THE RURAL VOICE
servings of pork were sold, which re-
quired 3,800 pounds of pork chops and
500 pounds of rib of pork to be barbe-
cued. We did slightly more than twice as
much business this year as last year in
Grey County. A box of pork chops was
sold to a person who was taking them
back to New York. The fame of the
Perth County pork chop is spreading.
The cooler displaying different cuts
of fresh pork drew much critical ac-
claim. Many people had no idea that
pork is so versatile. Thank you, Roger
Black from Mr. Grocer in Stratford, for
looking after the meat. For those of you
who saw the display and would like to
try some of these cuts, see Roger at Mr.
Grocer on Huron Street.
In addition we did a good business
selling sweatshirts, the entertainment
was very popular, and many people saw
our display promoting the association in
the county tent.
Many thanks to one and all who
helped make this year such an outstand-
ing success.
RECENT/COMING ACTIVITIES
On October 28 the Perth County
Agriculture in the Classroom Commit-
tee put on a professional development
day for primary teachers in the Perth -
Huron Roman Catholic school system.
The PCPPA strongly supports the Agri-
culture in the Classroom Committee and
participated in the PD day with our slide
set on pig farming.
A Food and Travel Extravaganza
will be held in the Stratford Coliseum on
November 3. We have been asked to
participate in this with our display
cooler of different pork cuts and possi-
bly pork samples. Check your newspa-
per for more information on this event.
The next directors' meeting will be
November 2 at 7:30 p.m. at the OMAF
building in Stratford.
FEDERAL ELECTION
The Perth County Federation of
Agriculture is organizing a federal can-
didates night for November 8, 8 p.m. in
the Milverton arena. Be sure to attend
and put your concerns and questions to
our future representative to the House of
Commons.
FREE TRADE
Pork producers have been fortunate
in that Howard Malcolm has been, and
still is, a member of the Sectoral Com-
mittee on Agriculture and Food that is
advising the government on their free
trade negotiations.
Howard and his family are pork pro-
ducers in Durham County. Howard is a
former chairman of the OPPMB and
former president of the Canadian Pork
Council (a body representing pork mar-
keting boards across Canada). He is in
the unique position of knowing about
producers' concerns from those in his
own township and county, those in his
own province, and those right across
Canada. All this makes for what some
would call a "blue-ribbon expert," but
what I call a person extremely well
qualified for his present advisory posi-
tion.
Many producers may be justifiably
confused about free trade because of the
different stances taken by different farm
groups. Therefore it may be worthwhile
to state the position taken by the Cana-
dian Pork Council and endorsed by the
OPPMB:
"The Canadian Pork Council sup-
ports the proposed Canada -United
States Free Trade Agreement on the
basis that it offers considerable net
benefits to the Canadian pork industry.
These include: the elimination of tar-
iffs; reciprocal undertakings to prevent
technical barriers, including animal
health measures, from exceeding what
is necessary to meet their original objec-
tives; the phased elimination of customs
user fees; an "open border policy" for
meat shipments, thus avoiding a poten-
tially very restrictive system for U.S.
inspection; and a dispute settlement
structure which appears will take much
less time to reach a verdict than is cur-
rently the case through the U.S. appeals
process we have been pursuing, as well
as providing a formal means for pursu-
ing trade disputes such as occurred in