Swine Innovation Porc, a national organization created to facilitate research on behalf of Canada’s pork industry has released its 2014 2015 annual report. This organization conducts the research through a national partnership involving the pork industry, government, and researchers is focusing on ensuring consumers will continue to choose pork.
While funded in part by the Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada in partnership with the pork industry, producers are paying their fair share.
Swine Innovation Porc chair Stewart Cressman says the main focus is to reduce production and feed costs, improve product attributes and prices, and enhance the adaptability and sustainability of the sector.
Cressman says the base funding comes from producers through a research levy collected on every individual hog marketed, so there is the realization that certainly benefits have to flow to the sector that currently is paying a good portion of the costs but there are other partners.
“The nutrition work, we would argue that it benefits the producer and there’s some best management practices looking at a more robust healthy pig in the nursery that requires less or no intervention with antibiotics,” he said. “As well there’s work with the processors, so looking at technologies that they can use in their plants to look at pork quality and attributes and then passing that on to further processors and retailers trying to better identify the attributes that they would like to have in their product that they put in the meat case and ultimately supply to the consumers.”
Cressman stresses the consumer has choices and doesn’t have to buy pork so the industry has to keep the end view in sight, improving the quality, the taste experience and the healthfulness of the product to maintain repeat customers at a competitive price point.
Keeping the comments about that producer and industry funded research at the forefront, a food scientist with the University of Manitoba suggests today’s consumers are better informed than ever about the health and nutritional aspects of the foods they eat.
A report released by the cancer agency of the World Health Organization, which labeled processed meat as carcinogenic, resulted in widespread media attention.
Dr. Rick Holley, a food safety and food microbiology professor with the University of Manitoba says earlier reports were somewhat misleading drawing parallels between smoking and eating bacon, when the risks associated with smoking are something like 2,500 percent greater.
“Consumers are in a very good position today by comparison with 20 years ago because the baseline levels of understanding and availability of credible information I think is far better today than it ever has been and so we’re in a relatively good position to be able to make informed judgments,” he said. “Certainly the information that health professionals have and continue to provide with regard to dietary habits, recommendations for eating a balanced diet coupled with adequate exercise I don’t think has fallen on deaf ears.”
While many accept the fact that processed meats are not the healthiest of items in the diet, moderation is certainly an element that needs to be taken into consideration in terms of the consumption of both processed meats and red meats too.
Dr. Holley says he is impressed the media keeps taking a balanced approach toward evaluating risks associated with the hazards that were brought to the public’s attention.
He suggests the media lost a few points when the story originally broke but gained them back during the course of reporting the issue.
The food scientist says the recognition that the agency making those claims did not consider new evidence and that this is a new opinion rather than results of new research has impacted the acceptance of the report.
“People are not easily hoodwinked these days and, while the report deals with carcinogenicity hazards associated with processed meats, the issue of the extent of the risk I think was not clearly communicated by the agency and was somewhat misleading,” Dr. Holley said. “In some of the early stories you see that parallels drawn between smoking and eating bacon and clearly the risks associated with the two activities are extremely different with smoking carrying risk levels that are something like 2,500 per cent greater level of risk than eating processed meats.”
Alcohol is about 500 times more risky than eating processed cured meats and these things didn’t come out within the context of what the level of risk associated with the consumption of processed meats were and that was unfortunate for the agency, he adds.
“If you go through the more recent news reports I think the perspective has changed considerably from the original release of information by the agency,” said Holley. “It appears the agency is not being viewed with the same level of respect as it has in the past.”  •
— By Harry Siemens