Farm-Scape is sponsored by Manitoba Pork Council and Sask Pork Play Audio Farm-Scape is a Wonderworks Canada production and is distributed courtesy of Manitoba Pork Council and Sask Pork.

Farm-Scape, Episode 1306

The Canadian Pork Council expects to complete phase one of the process that will result in federal government recognition of its 'Canadian Quality Assurance' program early in the new year.

The Canadian Pork Council is one of 19 commodity groups seeking Canadian Food Inspection Agency recognition of their on farm food safety programs.

CPC had submitted its program materials and completed a pre-screening when the technical review process was suspended in April to allow a reevaluation of the parameters for assessing the technical aspects of the various programs.

National Canadian Quality Assurance Coordinator Dawn LeBlanc says the process will resume next month at which time CPC will submit its updated materials.

"Beginning August 11th CFIA is going to be putting together our technical review team.

Basically they will be representatives from the departments of Agriculture from across the country and they will be looking at our HACCP model, which is the hazard analysis model that the Canadian Pork Council has done for the industry.

That's how we developed our producer materials, we identified the hazards and then we developed those questions that the producers who are on the program are so familiar with now.

Producers won't see a big impact until we know the final outcome of the technical review. Members of the review team are going to look at our HACCP model and they're going to see how we've incorporated the identified hazards into the producer materials.

If they have any concerns that information isn't clear or complete or if we've missed a hazard, they'll let us know and we'll have to go back and make some modifications".

LeBlanc says any necessary improvements to the CQA program or its supporting documentation will be identified during meetings in late October.

She says the hope is that all necessary changes can be made in time to allow the launch of a new set of updated program materials early in the new year.

For Farmscape.Ca, I'm Bruce Cochrane.