Knickers to free trade, says Pork Industry

Pig farmers are losing out as imports force local prices down.

By Phillipa Stevenson

agricultural editor

Pig farmers will make an unlikely pairing with the makers of men's and boys' underpants if an appeal for trade restrictions against imported pork is successful.

The Pork Industry Board became the fifth organisation to apply to the Ministry of Commerce for constraints on imports affecting its members since the Temporary Safeguard Authorities Act came into effect in 1987.

But so far the only group to gain a restriction, or Temporary Safeguard Action, is the Textile and Garment Manufacturers Federation, which snapped the elastic over imports of men's and boys' underpants from China in 1992.

A senior investigator in the ministry's Trade Remedies Group, Bruce Cullen, said duty of 75c a pair of underpants was placed on the imports for a year.

A South Auckland pig farmer, Ewen McIntyre, said he was not confident the Pork Board's application would succeed, but at least it had publicised the plight of the country's 480 pig producers.

Mr McIntyre, who is also a board member, said he had a cash loss of $50,000 in the last financial year after increased Canadian and Australian pork imports - up 85 per cent in at least one month - forced local prices down.

The 25-year industry veteran, who says he had "swine fever because I can't give up pig farming," said some of the year's costs came from efforts to improve competitiveness by investing in genetically superior stock for his 140-sow herd.

"The last 12 months were the worst ever. I would like to see the Government encourage the local industry with a duty on imports to allow us to get our house in order - like the Canadian and Australian Governments do for their farmers."

However, Peter Nicholas, the general manager of Mainland Products, the country's single biggest pig producer with 55,000 of the annual 780,000 kill, said trade restrictions would only "subsidise inefficient producers." He said 150-sow units were no longer economic in an industry which had been burdened with greater demands under the Resource Management Act. The whole industry was only the size of one Australian farm.

Mr Nicholas said imports were needed to satisfy demand for specific cuts. Also, in the past six months, 25 per cent of imports had been fatty trim for sausages and luncheon, following a shortage of mutton.

"That doesn't affect the price of fresh pork," he said.

Mr Nicholas said the action risked pushing up pork prices, and sparking a consumer rebellion when competing meats were cheap.

Mr McIntyre said Mr Nicholas talked "in terms of a processor [import buyer], not a pork producer."

The Consumers Institute had similar conflict. Its chief executive, David Russell, said that although import restrictions would mean higher prices for consumers "the real issue is trade fairness."