Domestic Pork Processing Largely Unaffected (For Now)

Wednesday, July 23, 2025

Canadian Meat Council VP Discusses Potential Impacts

By Matt Jones

Tariffs and trade wars with the United States are an ongoing and pressing topic of conversation, with reverberations that echo through our industries, including associated industries such as pork processing. And while the tariffs have – as of press time – been again postponed, it does raise questions about what the potential impacts could be in the future if they are enacted.

And more so, what are the current impacts of instability in our relationship with our largest trading partner?

In terms of capacity, a representative for Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada (AAFC) has told Better Pork that in 2024, 21.3 million Canadian-raised hogs were processed at federally and provincially-inspected slaughter establishments (the vast majority of that in federal establishments).

While it is common for Canadian pork to travel south of the border for processing, the reverse does not occur – 100 per cent of the hogs slaughtered in Canadian plants were raised in Canada.

“In terms of Canada’s total live swine production, 76 per cent are processed domestically while the remainder are exported to the U.S. as live swine for finishing and slaughter,” said the AAFC representative.

“The Canadian pork industry is also a major player in supplying safe and high-quality pork products internationally, shipping 1.4 million tonnes of pork valued at $5.5 billion to over 81 countries in 2024.”

Jorge Correa, vice-president market access and technical affairs for the Canadian Meat Council, emphasizes the same point – we are a trade-oriented nation and export the majority of the pork that we produce.

Canada is a producer for the world in a sense, but the U.S. is a very significant market for us, representing up to 30 of the 70 per cent we export.

“When we send pork there, most of it is chilled pork, fat and some bacon,” says Correa. “And when they bring it back, they bring a lot of processed pork like cooked hams, some bacon, as well as sausages. So this is the bulk of what we receive from there, as well as some cut, again chilled, very few frozen.”

From April 2024 to April 2025, Correa says that imports from the U.S. to Canada dropped by 56 per cent in volume overall, and by 33 per cent with regard to processed pork.

There had actually been an increase in overall volume of 9.2 per cent by January, before the tariffs started being discussed more widely, but the depressed imports since then resulted in an overall reduction.

Exports of Canadian product to the U.S. have not been significantly affected as of yet.

How much of that U.S.-processed product is derived from Canadian pork is unclear, but it does appear that even before the specific tariff issues, Canada had already started to diversify their imported products.

“When we compare April to April, we realize we have replaced the U.S. product with some others,” says Correa. “I can see Italy has increased their exports into Canada of processed pork. I speculate that some of those products that we had brought in from the United States have been replaced by Italian pork.”

Diversification is a sound strategy, but Correa emphasizes that does not mean that Canada has given up on its relationship with the U.S. Negotiations are ongoing.

“We are very integrated, we’re very close to each other,” says Correa.

“They need our pork. They have so many more people than we have, and we want to continue negotiations and be able to have a viable deal with the United States. We’re going to look for other markets. Maybe we want to be less dependent on the United States – but we still want to have a deal with the United States. I can tell you Mexico is playing a part in this as well.

“Since November last year, when all these strong threats started, Mexico started looking for more pork in Canada. This is a repercussion of this trade war, because Mexico is the first market for the United States in terms of pork, and Mexico sees them as not a trusted supplier, and now they’re looking for maybe other options. And one of those options is Canada without tariffs.”

The tariffs, Correa notes, would impact pork being sent over the border for any purpose – either for direct sales or for processing. With that being the case, one might wonder if Canadian processors would start trying to increase their production capacity. But Correa doesn’t expect that they will.

“Currently, we export about 1.6 million hogs to the United States,” says Correa. “Those live hogs would also have a tariff on them.

“We think we will be able to absorb those. If you remember, a couple of plants were shut down last year, and that decreased our capacity in Canada. Some of those hogs – especially in Eastern Canada – have to go somewhere to be slaughtered. And some of them were going south.”

Correa says it would be possible to increase capacity in Western Canada, though the distance across the country could be a limiting factor. But moreover, if our exports to the U.S. start to become affected and reduced by future tariffs, we would need to find new markets before we need to increase our processing capacity. Reduced numbers of exports means reduced need for processing.

We can, and are, looking for other trading partners to make ourselves less reliant on the U.S., but it’s not as though we can just scratch out ‘United States’ and write in another country’s name and keep all the same logistics. The U.S. is the only country on earth that we can trade with while relying only on trucks or trains; any other country would require air or sea shipping and a whole host of different logistics.

“Some dynamics will need to change, and that doesn’t happen in months,” says Correa. “It takes time to go through all that.

“And I can tell you, the other piece is China. China is extremely important for us, because we sell some cuts or parts that we don’t sell anywhere else, and at a price they’re buying it and in the amount that they’re buying it. China, because of the trade war with the United States, we have seen an increase of our exports in the first two months. We have already seen a 21 per cent increase of exports to China.

“The trade war between China and the United States is going to open markets for countries like Canada, but we have to be careful, because Brazil and Europeans are also taking advantage of that. So it will be interesting.”

Another key issue that Correa mentions in relation to the question of enhancing our processing capacity is that a significant amount of the materials and machinery used for processing and packaging are sourced from the U.S. Plastic bags, trays, vacuum packaging, and materials of that type are crucial to pork processing.

“It’s another challenging part of our production,” says Correa. “That’s another thing we’re going to have to look for, that equipment.”

Correa was the sole industry association representative to agree to an interview with Better Pork for this article.

A spokesperson for Maple Leaf Foods offered the following statement:

“While the U.S. has not imposed tariffs on CUSMA compliant exports (save for three days at the beginning of March), including pork, we continue to evaluate the broader implications of the U.S. government’s global tariffs.

“At Maple Leaf Foods, we have done extensive scenario analysis to understand the implications of U.S. and Chinese tariffs for our business, and to develop mitigation strategies to help reduce the potential harmful impacts on our business, our team members and the consumers who love our products. We will be continuing to monitor the situation closely.” BP