“The Canadian government’s NZ$100 million support for their ailing pork industry is essentially subsidies in drag,” New Zealand Pork said in August. “Cheap subsidized pork will make its way to New Zealand, undermining our local industry,” charged New Zealand Pork Chief Executive Sam McIvor.
He noted that New Zealand already imports 200,000 kilograms of Canadian pork weekly – “pork that can be produced using growth hormones and other standards of production that are not up to New Zealand standards.”