A receivership order filed June 12 in the Court of Kings Bench in Winnipeg has appointed BDO Canada Limited as receiver and manager for Genesus Inc., Genesus Genetics and Can-Am Genetics, Inc.

Genesus Inc., and Can-Am Genetics operate out of Oakville, Man. Genesus Genetics Inc., is incorporated in South Dakota, court records show.

According to an affidavit filed by a Bank of Montreal representative, the bank held mortgages for Genesus and Can-Am and had a payment guaranty agreement with Genesus Genetics Inc.

In mid-2023, BMO served notice that it intended to pursue enforcement action after repayment obligations were breached. Those actions were stayed in September 2023, when BMO agreed to delay enforcement under certain forbearance conditions. That forbearance agreement expired Jan. 15, the affidavit said.

Genesus bills itself as “the world’s largest independent producer of high health registered purebred swine in the world owning over 80% of all registered purebred breeding stock in Canada,” says the company’s website.

According to court records, Genesus had approximately 61 employees at the beginning of the year and about 17,700 hogs. Can-Am Genetics had approximately 13 employees.

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“Through this substantial investment, [Swine Innovation Porc] and our partners can spearhead the research needed to deliver science-based solutions for the benefit of Canadian pork producers, processors, and exporters,” said Arno Schober, Swine Innovation Porc’s chair.

Swine Innovation Porc (SIP) is a research and development non-profit with members including Canadian Pork Council and provincial hog groups.

This is the fourth hog research “cluster” funded through the AgriScience Program – Clusters Component, part of the Sustainable Canadian Agricultural Partnership, a Feb. 20 federal news release said. SIP also coordinated the previous three clusters.

In a news release, SIP said that it would spend up to $20.1 million in combined government and industry funding over the next five years on the sector’s research priorities. These include climate change and the environment, sector resilience, economic growth, and communication and knowledge transfer, the SIP news release said.

Research topics include new vaccines, antimicrobial alternatives, feed strategies, and genetics.

Previous cluster research turned up feeding strategies to increase productivity, new biosecurity methods in transport, a tool to classify pork, and ways to decrease antibiotic use and increase pork quality, the federal release said.

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Big agribusinesses in the world’s top pork producer have modernized farms and expanded pig herds so rapidly in recent years that a downturn in demand led to plummeting hog prices, mounting losses, and rising debt last year.

Farmers lost an average of 76 yuan (CAD $14.29) per hog in 2023, Lei Liugong, director of market and information technology at the ministry, said in a press briefing.

As a result, struggling producers sped up slaughter of pigs late last year to cut their losses, raising the country’s pork production to a nine-year high of 57.94 million metric tons.

Lei said the sow herd at end-December was down 2.5 million head from a year ago to 41.42 million head.

But herd numbers are still high and thus destocking will continue in the next one to two months, continuing to depress prices, he said.

The fall in the number of breeding sows will help the market recover in the second quarter of the year, he added.

To accelerate the return of supply and demand to equilibrium, the ministry will guide farms and households to reduce production capacity and fatten pigs at the right time, Lei said.

At the same briefing, Chen Bangxun, the ministry’s director of the development planning department, said there is room for China to continue reducing the amount of high-protein soybeans used in livestock feed.

The current proportion of soybean meal in feed formula fell to 13 per cent, down 1.5 percentage points from 2022, which is equivalent to a reduction of about 9 million metric tons of soybean consumption, Chen said.

Soybean demand in the world’s largest importer is largely driven by the livestock industry as the beans are crushed into meal for animal feed.

China, aiming to reduce its soybean imports, has promoted low-protein feed diets, and the use of oilseeds, leftover food and animal carcasses for feed.

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