For years, pig farmers across Canada have been selling their hogs based on pork prices in the United States. Now, Quebec producers want to know the true value of Canadian pigs.

Quebec’s pork producers union, called Les Éleveurs de porcs du Québec in French, registered to lobby the provincial government on July 30 for the implementation of a law like the U.S.’s Livestock Mandatory Reporting Act (LMRA) “for better price transparency.”

Quebec is the only province whose swine industry still operates with a single marketer. Les Éleveurs de porcs du Québec buys almost all live hogs in Quebec, takes a cut, and sells to slaughterhouses based on a collective marketing agreement negotiated every three years. In the absence of mandatory price reporting in Canada, the union has been relying on reference prices in the United States to bargain.

“[In Quebec] every producer’s production cost is investigated and publicly reported by government authorities every year. However, slaughterhouses have no obligation whatsoever to disclose any information,” said Tristan Deslauriers, spokesperson for Quebec’s pork producers union.

Quebec has 30 per cent of the Canadian swine herd. Quebec and Prince Edward Island producers are the lowest-paid hog farmers in the country.

Since 1999, the Livestock Mandatory Reporting Act has required American meatpackers to report the prices and terms of sale for cattle, swine and sheep to the United States Department of Agriculture. Deslauriers says the same legislation must be introduced in Canada.

“The current lack of transparency creates an uneven negotiating environment. It limits the producers’ access to critical market information,” he told the IJF.

In April, the Standing Committee on Agriculture and Agri-Food (AGRI) made the same argument to the House of Commons in a report. The AGRI document’s first recommendation was for Canada to implement a mandatory price reporting system, especially for beef and pork.

No federal bill has been introduced in response to the AGRI report yet.

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