Saskatchewan Pork Industry Symposium returns to large crowds
By Lynn Redl-Huntington
The 45th annual Saskatchewan Pork Industry Symposium returned as a live event for the first time in three years this past week at the Saskatoon Inn and Convention Centre. Nearly 300 hog farmers, industry stakeholders and partners attended from across Saskatchewan, Alberta, Manitoba, Ontario, and Quebec for the two-day event held on November 15-16th.
Sask Pork General Manager Mark Ferguson noted that much had changed since the last live Symposium, which took place 1,100 days earlier. He pointed the global pandemic, supply chain disruptions, the lowest hog prices in recent history to go along with restaurant closures and North American slaughter disruptions, and a 12 month period of the highest hog prices ever recorded.
“Through all these big events, the people in this room have continued to provide excellent care and attention to 2.5 million pigs that were produced and marketed across Saskatchewan each year,” said Ferguson. “We can be proud that our supply chain for pork remains strong and Canadian pork is plentiful on store shelves and in restaurants.”
The event featured keynote addresses from High Heels & Canola Fields’ Lesley Kelly and economist Dr. Steve Meyer. Kelly, the co-host of the “What the Farm” podcast, delivered a session on “When Stress is More Than a Season” while Meyer offered up his up-to-the-minute “North American Outlook for Pork.”
Kelly and Meyer were among 16 speakers from four countries. Mark Fynn delivered a session on Canadian Pork Council Training Tools for Pork Producers. Fynn is the lead on the Canadian Swine Training Development Project, which has produced over 50 training videos since the project began in 2019.
Farm Guardian CEO Rob Hannam offered the latest on biosecurity and what’s new in protecting farms, while also sharing updates on the Saskatchewan pilot project testing new technologies to help producers improve biosecurity and protect their herds from disease. The joint project between Farm Health Guardian and Sask Pork is trialing truck movement recording technologies at over 20 swine farms or businesses across the province.
Symposium 2022 included a charitable component with a silent auction, which raised over $1,800 for the Swine Medicine Advancement, Recruitment and Training (SMART) program at the University of Saskatchewan’s Western College of Veterinary Medicine. The goal of the program is to support the recruitment, retention, and advanced training of swine veterinarians in Canada. Funds raised through the Symposium silent auction will take action to increase and support swine veterinarians specifically in Saskatchewan through: experiential undergraduate training, clinical competency training and verification, remote clinical residency, and advanced early career training.
The conference also featured a Graduate Students Research Competition with 12 students from across Saskatchewan vying for top honours. Jessica Veholf from Prairie Swine Centre won the oral competition with her research on the effects of sow grouping practices on behaviour and production while Carley Camire from Prairie Swine Centre won in the poster presentation category for her work on the effects of feeding a diet with supplemental lysine and a low or high essential amino acid-nitrogen to total nitrogen ratio on growth performance in 20-5kg pigs.
Premium sponsors of Symposium 2022 included: Hypor Canada, Maple Leaf Foods, Precision Ag Systems, Thunder Creek Pork-Donald’s Fine Foods, Titan Environmental Containment. Event sponsors were: Bio Agri Mix & Phibro Animal Health, Boehringer Ingelheim Animal Health, Fast Genetics, the Government of Saskatchewan, H@ms Marketing Services, Leroy Feeds, Merck Animal Health, Olymel, PIC, Polar Pork Farms, South West Vets, Warman Veterinary Services, Western Ag Systems as well as universal sponsors, Automated Production, Connect OnFarm, Farm Credit Canada, Farmers Depot, Fortified Nutrition Limited, Kemin/Pestell, PMT Inc., Masterfeeds an Alltech Company, Sinnett Pork Farm Ltd., University of Saskatchewan College of Agriculture & Bioresources, Western College of Veterinary Medicine, Wilbur-Ellis Company of Canada, and VIDO. Media sponsors were Farmscape and Prairie Hog Country.
Symposium 2023 is scheduled to return November 7-8, 2023.