Barn freeze puts Manitoba industry in limbo

“We felt like we got hit in the side of the head with a bat,” says Karl Kynoch, a Baldur producer and chair of the Manitoba Pork Council, after being called into the office of Premier Gary Doer in early November and told that hog barn expansion would be frozen until the environmental effects of the industry could be evaluated.

The government plans to do this by preventing more building permits being issued to barn builders.

The industry had been through a series of consultations with the government. “We knew there were regulations coming down,” Kynoch says, but pork producers expected to share responsibility for the growing amounts of phosphorus in Lake Winnipeg with golf course operators, homeowners and cities that dump raw sewage.

Instead, the government “pointed out our lone little sector,” says Kynoch. A clean environment commission is going to evaluate the industry. “We hope it will be done in a year,” Kynoch says.

Kynoch has no doubts that the pork industry will be absolved. Pork production is responsible for one per cent of the phosphorus going into rivers and lakes, he asserts. Kynoch didn’t directly answer questions about whether Maple Leaf Foods’ national consolidation to its Brandon plant will be jeopardized, but he admitted that processor confidence will be shaken, and says the natural “maturing” of the industry will be stopped.

Manitoba sows will wean nine million pigs this year and four million will be shipped south of the border for finishing. “That is a tremendously increased risk on the border,” Kynoch says, and grain farmers need the markets. With $1 billion in sales last year, hogs are the biggest single agricultural commodity produced in Manitoba. BF