Canada Beef and the Canadian Beef Check-off Agency have selected their next President.

Eric Bienvenue will join the team as the incoming President effective Tuesday, October 3, 2023.

He has nearly 30 years of experience in senior leadership roles in the Canadian pork and poultry industries.

Bienvenue served as President and CEO of Boire et Frères Inc., Canada’s largest hatchery company and among its biggest chicken producers.

He also spent more than 20 years at Olymel S.E.C, where he held various jobs from line supervisor to Executive Vice President of all pork operations, with responsibilities for 13 plants across Canada and a team of more than 6,500 people.

During his time at Olymel, he was involved in mergers and acquisitions and led initiatives to improve efficiencies and market and product developments and was responsible for multi-million-dollar projects in Red Deer, Alberta, Cornwall, Ontario, and Quebec.

Bienvenue will work side by side with the current president Michael Young over the next six months as part of a transition period until his retirement in March 2024.

Under Young’s 5-year term as leader, the Canadian beef industry has experienced some of the highest beef demand, export volume, and values in decades. 

In 2022, Canadian beef exports reached the second-largest volume on record at 511,000 tonnes and set a new record for  Canadian beef export values for a total of $4.6 billion