Pork and poultry processor Olymel has tightened the links in the hog supply chain for its Alberta pork plant by buying supplier Pinnacle Farms. Olymel, the meat packing arm of Quebec’s La Coop federee, announced Friday it has bought Standard, Alta.-based Pinnacle, including all its hog inventory, for an undisclosed sum. The company’s 30 employees […] Read more
Olymel buys Alberta hog farming operation
Argentina pledges access for Canadian pork
Canada and Argentina are in late-stage talks that would see Canadian pork exporters regain access to that South American market. Following a meeting between Argentina’s President Mauricio Macri and Canada’s Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, the federal government last Friday said the two countries have “acknowledged the necessary steps to complete the process to allow for […] Read more
Local food experts share their stories
Reading Time: < 1 minute Bonnie Spragg of Spragg’s Meat Shop and Nicola Irving of Irvings Farm Fresh will be presenters at Getting into Local Foods workshops later this month. The Spraggs started their meat-processing business so they could produce meat products in their own facility and sell them from their on-site store in Rosemary. The Irvings also raise pigs […] Read more
Maple Leaf profit jumps by over 70 per cent
Reuters — Meat processor Maple Leaf Foods on Wednesday reported a 70.4 per cent jump in quarterly profit as lower costs and higher prices boosted earnings at its prepared meats business. Maple Leaf said adjusted operating earnings in its meat products unit, the company’s primary source of income, more than doubled to $65.93 million in […] Read more
Price isn’t everything at the meat counter — being Canadian counts, too
About half of consumers say they check labels to ensure they’re buying meat of Canadian origin
Reading Time: 2 minutes Good news, Canadian livestock producers — your fellow citizens are willing to pay more for your meat. “Canadians buy Canadian to support local and Canadian farmers, support the local economy, and for freshness,” Barry Davis of Leger Marketing said at the recent FutureFare conference. His firm surveyed 1,609 meat shoppers and two-thirds said they had […] Read more
Hog producers taking a hit as prices plunge once again
The low dollar is taking away some of the pain caused by a big increase in the American pig herd
Reading Time: 3 minutes The roller-coaster ride for hog producers has once again taken a steep downward plunge. “Prices really started to slide a couple of months ago,” said Marcel Rupert, who has an 800-sow farrow-to-finish operation north of Drumheller. And they may have a ways to go. The price of feeder pigs is a leading indicator in the […] Read more
U.S. pork packing plant boom may boost hog prices
Chicago / Reuters – The U.S. pork industry could be heading for higher hog prices as processing plants come on line at an unprecedented rate with packers investing millions of dollars to satisfy the appetite of protein-hungry China, industry analysts said. Pork packers including Seaboard Foods and Triumph Foods, who slaughter hogs and turn them into […] Read more
New PED threat ‘a crisis moment,’ says Alberta Pork
Prairie pork boards say swine trailers coming from U.S. must be washed and disinfected here
Reading Time: 2 minutes Not requiring hog trailers coming from the U.S. to be washed and disinfected at certified Canadian wash sites is a “a crisis moment for the Canadian swine industry,” says Alberta Pork. The organization joined its western Canadian counterparts in a last-ditch effort to persuade the Canadian Food Inspection Agency to extend a federally approved trailer-wash […] Read more
Beijing to release frozen pork to temper price rise
Beijing | Reuters –– Beijing will release 3.05 million kilograms of frozen pork from its reserves over the next two months to combat rising pork prices, the city government said on Wednesday. Starting from Thursday and lasting until July 4, the Beijing municipal government will sell 50,000 kg of pork each day to 121 supermarket chains […] Read more
Hairy Hungarian heritage pigs find a new home in Alberta
Reading Time: 3 minutes People often do a double take when they see Malorie Aubé’s pigs. The heritage breed sports a thick woolly coat of black hair (white on their bellies), with piglets having horizontal white striping along their sides. Mangalitsa pigs — which originated in Hungary in the 1830s — are also a “lard breed” with a lot […] Read more
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