It has weathered seven or eight incredibly-tough years of low
prices, U.S. trade barriers and wildly fluctuating feed costs without losing
its 15 to 20 per cent share of global pork exports.
Now that the tough times are behind it, the industry is in
solid shape to expand, using record-high profits last year, a decline in feed
costs and relative success – compared with the United States – in limiting
death from Porcine Epidemic Diarrhea virus.
The United States is in a last-gasp effort to preserve its
protectionist Country-of-Origin Labeling regulations and if it loses during an
appeal hearing Feb. 17 and 18 at Geneva, the World Trade Organization will
order it to either drop COOL or face punitive tariffs that Canada and Mexico
could impose to pressure the U.S.
“I think the data gathered by independent
sources around the world have shown that Canada at the production level is a
very competitive production area globally,” Grier told a recent pork-industry
conference at Banff, Alta.
“We rank among the least cost producers amongst
all the major producers.
“We're among the least cost and so, from a
production perspective, Canada is a very competitive nation,” he said.
But he also cautioned that Canadian meat packers
are less efficient than their competitors in the United States.
That is “where we start to run into some
problems,” he said, including lack of opportunities to match the high volumes
that can be run through the largest U.S. plants.
