Farm-Scape, Episode 1680

The Canadian Pork Council says details of how the newly developed Animal Care Assessment Tool will be integrated into the Canadian Quality Assurance will be rolled out over the next few weeks.

The Animal Care Assessment Tool was designed along the lines of Canada's national on farm food safety program for swine and will provide a mechanism to allow producers to document their animal care procedures.

National Canadian Quality Assurance Coordinator Dawn Lawrence says a roll over period will provide an opportunity to become familiar with the new resource.

"The animal care component will be added to the Canadian Quality Assurance program. We're currently working out the logistics for that but producers who are on the CQA program can expect to receive a copy of the assessment tool in the new year and we will be determining all of the details for how this will tie into validations in the coming months.

At the present time we expect that we will have a roll over period during which time producers can learn the program, learn to implement it and, if they want to have that included on their validation, it wouldn't affect their registration or recognition status on the CQA program.

It will give producers and validators an opportunity to learn the program and to make any changes that are necessary.

The way that we are currently looking at structuring this will be that producers who wish to take part in the animal care component will be required to be on the food safety component of the CQA program.

If a producer wishes to only do the food safety component, they will not be required to do the animal care component but all those details are still being worked out and we'll be able to provide more information in the new year."

While the animal care assessment will initially be a voluntary component, the eventual intent for the new component to become a mandatory part of CQA.

For Farmscape.Ca, I'm Bruce Cochrane.