The Chair of Swine Innovation Porc says added federal funding for pork industry research will bolster several projects currently in progress.

Earlier this week Federal Agriculture Minister Lawrence MacAulay announced an additional 1.8 million dollars has been allocated to the pork research cluster to continue research aimed at enhancing the competitiveness and sustainability of the Canadian pork industry.

The additional funding brings the total Government of Canada investment in research under the existing five year agreement, which runs from 2013 to 2018, to 14.8 million dollars.

Stewart Cressman, the Chair of Swine Innovation Porc, says the additional funding will be used to continue work underway at the University of Manitoba looking at improved flooring options for sows, work underway at the University of Saskatchewan aimed at improving methods for processing barley to improve its digestibility with piglets and genomic research underway at the University of Alberta.

This is Growing Forward 2 money that was still available and it was offered to all of the various clusters. We in Swine Innovation, the pork cluster, looked at our programs and thought there was an opportunity for some of these existing research projects who, if additional funds were made available, they could provide additional results from the work that is currently being done. That was the nature of our approach in terms of approaching researchers who are currently doing projects with us.

~ Stewart Cressman, Swine Innovation Porc

Cressman says the top priority is ensuring the pork industry remains viable in a competitive market place. He says the intent is to translate the research into results that can be implemented by producers and processors to make the industry more efficient.