Canada Pork International in partnership with Canada’s national and provincial pork organizations organized a trade mission to Japan in early March to build on existing trade relations with Japanese customers and celebrate the signing of the Comprehensive Progressive Trans-Pacific Partnership.

One of the participants was Casey Smit chair of the Saskatchewan Pork Development Board, also the Vice President, Swine Production, Western Canada of Olymel.

“I think it was an opportunity, as a producer in western Canada here, to see what the Japanese consumer is looking for in a quality product,” said Smit. “We’ve heard much about it over the years, but to see firsthand and visit customers that buy Canadian pork was a real opportunity, and gives a real feel to what it means to export over there and see it all come together.”

He said Japan continues to be a key export market for the Canadian pork producers. First, there are only a handful of countries that can export chilled pork to Japan and some other Asian countries, such as Korea and China.

“We learned this over there. The European countries are too far away to sell chilled pork over there, and that is one of the fastest growing segments of the Japanese market,” said Smit. “That’s a tremendous advantage for Canada, and we’ve made tremendous gains over the past few years. We’re poised to overtake the US in chilled exports to Japan, hopefully soon. The latest numbers came out that the US right now is at about 52 per cent and Canada’s at about 45 per cent of the chilled pork exports into Japan, and that’s steadily growing for Canada. So, that bodes well.”

He said the second reason is that Canada has an excellent reputation when it comes to food safety and quality. The Verified Canadian Pork label that appears on Canadian pork products highlights the quality assurance programs that Canada has in place.

“We found out, again, just how important it is to the Japanese consumer in building confidence in our products. Certainly, they view the domestic product as the premier product in Japan, and next to that is the Canadian products ahead of the US products,” said Smit. “We sit in an excellent position, and that Verified Canadian Pork label is a testament to that.”

Being from Saskatchewan, the Saskatchewan Pork Development Board chair it’s vital to Saskatchewan producers and suggests it would rank very high. All three major packers on the prairies, Olymel, HyLife, and Maple Leaf, maintain sales offices in Japan to grow sales and service customers for quite some time. Other regional abattoirs also market pork to Japan but typically through brokers.

“All the companies rely on market hogs from across the prairies and Saskatchewan, and play an important role to all three in providing quality market hogs,” said Smit. “I think when we look at what the large packers are and the regional abattoirs as well, certainly without their efforts in Japan and elsewhere we simply could not produce the volumes that we do today.”

Take note, he said, it is essential all the packers are looking for more market hogs to support the increase in demand, which is the exciting part in what they saw in Japan a country of over 130 million people, and pork is one of the primary protein sources, only second to seafood.

For example in Japan, Costco has about 30 in Japan for a country of 130 million people. To put that in perspective, in Canada Costco has almost 100 stores and nearly 25 per cent of the population just scratching the surface in Japan. Canadian pork is a big part of their program that they put in their stores. So, they’re looking at how they expand elsewhere, and they’ve got an aggressive strategy going forward.

“That will be the challenge for the Canadian hog industry, is how we continue to support that to our packers and to make sure we get the animals into the system that we can supply quality pork,” he said. “That was a direct question that we had a grocery store chain. They had 100 stores throughout Japan. The biggest concern was, if they’re going to showcase Canadian pork through their stores, how do we continue increasing the supply there so that they have a continuous supply of quality product?”

“I think the main takeaway is that we as Canadian pork producers have a real advantage over our US neighbors to the south regarding the quality pork we produce,” said Smit. “The more we build on our reputation and leverage it regarding supporting the growth opportunities with the quality pork, the better the Canadian pork producer will be.”

Rick Bergmann of Steinbach, chair of the Canadian Pork Council said the group on the trade mission to Japan included 15 producers from across Canada.

“We spent our time primarily in Tokyo and what a testament going to the Costco stores in Tokyo seeing Canadian branded pork, the verified Canadian pork brand on a lot of the meat,” said Bergmann. “So for me, it was great to see the brands of HyLife, Maple Leaf and Olymel and others as a testament of all the hard work that producers are doing here in Canada to provide a product recognized as superior in Japan.” •

— By Harry Siemens