By Bruce Cochrane
The chair of the Saskatchewan Pork Development Board says Canadian participation in the Trans-Pacific Partnership is critical to ensuring the Canadian pork industry remains competitive with the United States.
The 12 nations involved in negotiations aimed at creating a Trans-Pacific Partnership free trade agreement concluded an agreement last month and the deal now must be ratified by Parliament.
Florian Possberg, the chair of the Saskatchewan Pork Development Board, says the jewel in the crown of that whole deal is the Japanese market.
Florian Possberg-Saskatchewan Pork Development Board:
Number 1, if we are able to join the TPP and Japan reduces its barriers to their market place, it's really good for us.
On the flip side, if other countries complete a deal and we don't, we're quite disadvantaged in our highest value market so it's quite critical for our industry to be a successful part of this trade deal.
We have really have recent experience with trade deals that were not done in a timely fashion with South Korea.
South Korea was a very large market for Canadian Pork.
We know that the United States was able to complete a deal with South Korea and had an advantage in terms of access and tariffs and we saw our portion of that business drop by something like 400 percent in very short order.
We really can't afford to have that happen with Japan and so it's just so important for us to be right at the front line of a successful deal.
Possberg says we know there are some very serious consequences if we're left on the outside.
Source: Farmscape