Farmscape for July 23, 2010   (Episode 3377)

Maple Leaf Consumer Foods is confident the launch of a new premium line of moisture enhanced pork products will help stimulate increased domestic sales of pork.

Earlier this month Maple Leaf Consumer Foods introduced Maple Leaf Prime Pork a premium line of moisture enhanced pork products.

Prime Pork is produced from cuts of fresh pork selected for color and marbling at the company's Brandon processing plant and the moisture enhancement and packaging happens at a Maple Leaf facility in Alberta.

Maple Leaf vice-president procurement John Carney says the company has had success with its line of Prime Poultry and from that response realized there's a market for high quality product and is using Prime Pork as vehicle to increase market share and stimulate sales of Canadian pork.

Clip-John Carney-Maple Leaf Consumer Foods:
We're targeting consumers that are looking for a product that will deliver great taste every time.

The moisture enhancement ensures that pork tastes good no matter how your prepare it because what we know from consumer studies is that consumers generally tend to overcook pork and the moisture enhancement serves to ensure that it's tender and tasty every time.

We have extensively tested this product in 80 stores in western Canada over 20 months and what we have found is that consumers are looking for a product that delivers high quality, better taste and freshness.

We have had strong acceptance of the product in our testing and we are very confident that consumers are going to want to purchase this pork.

It's available in Sobeys West, Federated Co-op, Calgary Co-op and Overwaitea Food Group.

Carney says Maple Leaf has learned through its Prime Poultry launch that consumers are looking for high quality better tasting fresh product and he views the introduction of Maple Leaf Prime Pork as a way of expanding the sale of fresh pork in western Canada and ultimately growing the industry.

For Farmscape.Ca, I'm Bruce Cochrane.

       * Farmscape is a presentation of Sask Pork and Manitoba Pork Council