Agriculture committee  Good morning. My name is Hans Kristensen. I'm a producer from New Canaan, New Brunswick, and the maritime representative on the Canadian Pork Council board of directors. I'm joined today by Gary Stordy, the Canadian Pork Council's manager of government and public relations. I wo

Agriculture committee  Thank you. It's a very good question. As we've experienced in the past, international competition on a direct bottom line can sometimes be an insurmountable problem for Canadian pork producers. That is why the Canadian pork industry has been and will continue to be focused on br

Agriculture committee  Yes, absolutely. If you look at the rate of capital reinvestment in our industry over the last 15 years, it has declined significantly. It's declined for many reasons, mostly due to the economic hard times around 2008-09 and the recovery it took in our industry. The level of r

Agriculture committee  We like to think there is, yes. Producers in New Brunswick will take credit for that. Both the province of New Brunswick and the hog industry suffered a severe setback some years ago with the closure of the only federally inspected processing plant in New Brunswick, which at the

Agriculture committee  Thank you. That's a very good question and a very complex issue. Again, we'll go to innovation here. I can only speak about my personal experiences in Atlantic Canada, but we are in exactly the position you just described. We're a geographically isolated area which affords us

Agriculture committee  Another aspect we can look at is some type of policy in the new framework that would address geographic isolation, whereby a veterinarian's services would not cost me more because I'm located 300 miles away than they would if I were next door. If there were some way that we could

Agriculture committee  No, that's fine.

Agriculture committee  Sure. The issue we have as pork producers is that while we consider that the CFIA does a valued and great job domestically, a lot of people don't even realize the need for the service they need to provide to protect and enhance our markets internationally. The problem is that w

Agriculture committee  The laundry list changes between countries, and daily, so as we're in negotiations, the laundry list can change, which is why it's extremely important that the CFIA have the resources and the staff to react to those changes and demands. Sometimes they can be changed simply in a

Agriculture committee  Food traceability is becoming the hot topic. The goal of any food traceability program, as far as an industry and a government is concerned, is basically twofold: one, to limit the impacts on our trade, and two, to recover as quickly as possible. We need to look at enhancing an

Agriculture committee  Mr. Chair, good morning. My name is Hans Kristensen. I am a pork producer from New Brunswick and the Maritime representative of the Canadian Pork Council's board of directors. I would first like to thank the members of the House of Commons Standing Committee on Agriculture and A

Agriculture committee  Hedging is a very useful tool for producers. Unfortunately, unless there's a program in place to help us offset the cost, it comes with the risk of rising prices for producers in the ensuing cash calls that can be had on the market. Therefore, we can be in a position where we wou

Agriculture committee  We're talking about some type of hedging insurance program that would help offset the need of that protection against rising market prices.

Agriculture committee  While it's true we have emerging markets, and wonderful opportunities continue in Japan and China, we do need to invest in our industry. Our problem right now will be access to capital. Because of the economic troubles of our industry from 2005 to 2010, a lot of our producers had

Agriculture committee  When it comes to the CALA program, one of the biggest disadvantages we have is the limitations on the amount of borrowing. So an individual producer today can only access that program, I believe, to the tune of $500,000. We operate in a very capital intensive industry. Unlike a l