June 21, 2011 – The
Manitoba Pork Council is expressing its frustration over the provincial
government’s passage of new legislation that further limits the ability of the
province's pork producers to expand their operations.
June 21, 2011 – The
Manitoba Pork Council is expressing its frustration over the provincial
government’s passage of new legislation that further limits the ability of the
province's pork producers to expand their operations.
Bill 46, which was passed
recently in the Manitoba legislature, contains new provisions designed to
reduce the amount of nutrients – particularly phosphorus – entering Lake
Winnipeg, including extending a 2008 moratorium on new hog barn construction or
expansion in the eastern part of Manitoba, to the entire province.
Manitoba Pork Council
chair Karl Kynoch says suggestions that hog manure is being allowed to enter
Lake Winnipeg are completely unfounded.
“When the premier comes
out and is always linking Lake Winnipeg to the hog industry, that’s a real
challenge for us and a lot of people believe what the government says and
that,” he said.
“The hog manure is not
getting into Lake Winnipeg and the reason it isn’t getting into Lake Winnipeg
is the process that the farmers go through to apply it.
About 88 percent of the
manure today is actually incorporated, injected right into the ground and
there's very little that is even top applied.
“For a farmer to be able
to spread manure, he actually has to fill out a manure management plan, he has
to take soil tests and then he has to say what rate he’s going to apply it to
meet the uptake of the crop over a period of time.
“The safeguard that’s put
in place to make sure he does that is that he actually has to send that plan
into the government, get the government to sign off and approve that he can do
it and then the producer is also subject to the government coming out, auditing
the field and making sure he did that.
“Another regulation that
is in place, it is actually against the law for a producer to allow any manure
to run off of his field so there's numerous regulations and laws in place to
safeguard that and make sure we are doing exactly what we say.”
Kynoch notes hog producers
have come up with several approaches for reducing the industry’s environmental
footprint but they have been ignored.
