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 1390

The Manager of Sask Pork says a national system for tracking live animal movements across Canada will also be useful in the day to day management of livestock operations.

Several interests including the National Animal Health Coalition, various livestock commodity groups and federal and provincial government agencies have partnered to develop a traceability system that will meet the needs of all species and all producers.

Neil Ketilson says the main reason for traceability is to minimize the potential trade disruptions that would result from a foreign animal disease outbreak but the information will also be of value to producers.

"Traceability in our mind is a program whereby, through the cooperation of producers and agencies like Sask Pork and other groups like the Canadian Cattlemen's Association, can deliver a program which provides traceability but also is a net benefit to producers in terms of providing them more information that they can use for management.

Producers are inundated right now with a whole multitude of tasks in terms of reporting to various agencies and a number of administrative duties that they're going to have to do whether it be on the environmental front, the traceability front, all those kinds of things.

Our really objective is to build a system whereby those producers aren't adding onto their administration and what they do but the records that they keep for their own management systems would be able to be used for traceability".

Ketilson says the ability to tack animal movement is an important component of zoning.

He says the BSE incident in Alberta has heightened the awareness of the importance of having a national system for tracking the movement of all species.

For Farmscape.Ca, I'm Bruce Cochrane.