so much for value added

[craig]

cottonpicken
I would suggest to you there are no multimillion dollar hog operations left in Canada. The ones I hear about are the ones millions in debt. To the rest of the comments, don't expect anyone to show sympathy when you can't afford your $300,000 dollar combine.Further is your barley, canola peas or wheat any better than it was 20 years ago. You all seem to miss the point. Pork quality is not what is currently effecting the market. The pork industry is being impacted by media sensationalism, non tariff trade barriers and a poor economy. If you as a grain farmer has a solution to these issues then step to the plate.

[parsley]

I am trying to step up to the plate, except this is the part you don't want to hear:

Taxation is not an option.

We can't bail every industry and their tagalongs, out of a bad spot, although begging is defensible if you're paid as the lobbyist, I guess.


A few years ago when beef tanked, a lot of consumers went out of their way to buy beef. And they filled their freezers to barbque. it helped a lot.

Consumers buying a whack of pork right about now would help as I see it.As long as it's a saleable product.

GM took to begging. But if they had targeted 50 thousand farmers and convinced them to buy half tons, it would probably been more helpful to GM's bottom line in the long run. Capista? Pars

[grassfarmer]

Agree on the pork quality issue - or should say our customers do. We marketed some pasture raised Large Black hogs last year to our grass-fed beef customers and the response was phenominal. They had a clean taste, not a hog barn stink taste. We doubled our orders for this year with no marketing effort. The customer is always right - unfortunately industrial agriculture still doesn't want to listen.

Agree that this doesn't help the "pork industry" - but rather like the "beef industry" how worth saving is it? We are in the food production business and it's time we got back in touch with our real paymasters - the consumer not Governments, not multinational packers, not retailers.

[Hopperbin]

No multi million dollar hog operations?
Is there a hog operation that is not multi million dollar? Ditto for us farmers these days but when a hog operation can go bankrupt and the owner buys a new half ton and a new million dollar house in the same year after bankruptsy , not sure what to say here.

[Hopperbin]

Is it all about jobs and an extra market for our grains? That definately has been a boost to the community.

[parsley]

There is:

1.Odour issue in so much of the pork.

Not only an occassional whiff of "boar" odor, in other words weanlings that were not castrated properly or perhaps not at all, but there is often a foul pig barn smell to the meat. I drive 2 hours from home to get good pork. Sweet smelling pork.

2. There is what i call a fester-globule in segments of the butchered meat that I have bought in stores. A person has to cut them out if you are going to use it at all. It is a bad color, it looks inflamed, it is not normal, and it is reoccurring continually. Not huge...maybe two inches usually. A glob that needs to be removed if you're sane.

I quit buying in the large stores because of these two factors.

If you are a cook, you notice. Pars

[parsley]

Good for you for listening to the consumer. You will have a market for your food.

Growing and raising food that no one wants to buy will mean buyers/eaters will turn to other countries.

[Hopperbin]

Funny that some people joke about Chinese eating cat dog or monkey. Make some friends of new Chinese people working in pig barns and you can have all the pork you can eat, apparently they don't like it so much. Not just talk it is fact.

[parsley]

It's not the way the pigs are handled. The cysty-lumpy-bruisey globules are not near the surface of the skin. They are in either the flesh or fat. So that elimminates getting bashed by equipment or some such thing.

So it could be either the genetics of the pig. Or the feed.

Some cultures eat grubs. Others dogs. Others pigs. Some eat camel. Some horse. Some ate humans at one time. Nothing new here.

pars

[sumdumguy]

There were fewer problems with pork before all the real "entrepreneurs" got in the trough. A lot of small farms had a few porkers rutting up the yard, then along came the big boys and kicked them in the A. Now, lets protect them.

Furthermore, the odd smell to pork now, I bought nice vaccuum packed back ribs at the supermarket, started cooking them and couldn't almost walk into my house for 3 days. Weird Smell.