Provincial election 2019: know your issues

The next Alberta provincial election will take place on Tuesday, April 16, 2019. For producers, the next election is an opportunity for the interests of agriculture to reinforced by voting for your local candidate with the strongest background and most favourable policy positions in this area. Alberta Pork has previously covered electoral boundary changes and…

PED town hall provides investigative insights

Alberta Pork and Alberta Agriculture and Forestry hosted a town hall teleconference on March 13 for over 150 producers and industry partners, related to the discovery and investigation of the porcine epidemic diarrhea (PED) virus in our province this year. Alberta Pork continues to work closely with Alberta Agriculture and Forestry to prevent the disease…

Alberta PED case deemed a false positive

Last week, we announced a third and fourth case of the porcine epidemic diarrhea (PED) virus, a disease that causes diarrhea and vomiting in pigs, had been discovered at separate hog operations in Alberta. Today, we are clarifying that the third case was a false positive. As of now, we can confirm three outbreaks of…

CQA program obligations remain in place

For producers certified under the existing Canadian Quality Assurance (CQA) program, a reminder that program obligations are still in place, including your annual validation renewal. If yours is approaching due, please be diligent in following up with your validator. At the Alberta Pork annual general meeting in November 2018, our producers voted to pass a…

Second PED case discovered in Alberta

A 600-head farrow-to-finish hog operation in Alberta has contracted the porcine epidemic diarrhea (PED) virus, a disease that causes diarrhea and vomiting in pigs. Alberta Pork is working closely with Alberta Agriculture and Forestry to fully investigate this outbreak and prevent the disease from spreading further. This is the second-ever reported case of PED in…

Provincial election 2019: boundary changes

The next Alberta provincial election will occur on or before May 31, 2019. With each election cycle comes the possibility of constituency boundary adjustments. The constituency in which you lived or voted in 2015—the last provincial election—may have changed for this year. By law, the total number of constituencies (87) remains the same in 2019…

Do not feed food scraps to pigs

Pigs can eat many things, but that does not mean they should. Alberta Pork strongly disapproves the use of any human food scraps as pig feed. By feeding scraps, it is quite possible you are breaking the law, not to mention jeopardizing the integrity of our annual $24 billion Canadian pork industry. In Canada, it…

Lunar New Year 2019: return of the Earth Pig

Lunar New Year 2019—commonly referred to as Chinese New Year—begins on February 5. We are entering the Year of the Pig, the last animal in the 12-year Chinese calendar cycle. Characteristics of the pig include luck, wealth, honesty, generosity and trustworthiness. The Chinese calendar also follows a cycle of five natural elements (Wood, Fire, Earth,…