Kevin Estrem, the past president of Minnesota Pork said Minnesota raises 18 million pigs a year in and so it’s a big factor in the state’s economy, and 3,400 different farms raise pigs in Minnesota.

“One thing about working with Manitoba Pork is we’ve had a very good relationship for many years. They’ve come down to our trade show and meetings and we come up here and we share so much alike because we get so many pigs from Manitoba down through Minnesota and going elsewhere beyond and into different states’ he said. “The main travel is through Minnesota so our main concern is disease control and different viruses that can be spread, but not only when they’re coming into Minnesota but the idea of their trucks coming back to Canada, what possibly they would be bringing back. So it’s a two-way street and we’re very concerned, just like Manitoba is very concerned on how we can actually control this cross reference that’s going on.”

Estrem said they work dramatically to keep everything under control. The protocols that are in place, again, it’s the biosecurity and both Manitoba and Minnesota have some very strict what can cross the border protocols. Again, communication is a big, big, big factor in this.

“We’ve got a lot of things in place and we’ve got places where they can sanitize their trucks before they come back to Canada and vice versa.”

All things seem to point to the same focus, President Trump has some different ideas the industry is used to hear.

“With our new administration, President Trump has some different ideas in play as far as our exports, and we not only in Minnesota but the US depends on a lot of exports to overseas countries and Mexico and even into Canada, so our goal is for things hopefully to settle down a little bit and he can see forward with our obligations to produce a safe and healthy product for many people of the world, not only … We are dependent on the exports to really make a livelihood out of this industry.”

To keep the border between Canada and the United States open for free and easy is vital to a North American pig industry. •

— By Harry Siemens