Zoning, Premise Registration and Tattoo Number Scheme Key Identified as Key to Traceability
CANADA - Farm-Scape: Episode 1681. Farm-Scape is a Wonderworks Canada production and is distributed courtesy of Manitoba Pork Council and Sask Pork.Farm-Scape, Episode 1681
The Chair of the National Hog Identification and Traceability System Working Committee says considerable ground needs to be covered to prepare a national livestock traceability system.
The draft report from a series of pilot studies designed to provide direction for establishing a national identification and traceability system is under review and a final report is due by the end of January.
Dennis McKerracher says a blueprint will be ready in the first half of 2005 for the Canadian Pork Council and its provincial members to review but a lot needs to get done first.
"Two of the main tasks yet to be addressed by this working committee and by the Canadian Pork Council and the provinces are a national premise registration.
We have to register all the premises where hogs are housed.
To do this we will have to have a national number scheme and that will be supplied to us by the Canadian Livestock Identification Agency.
Also we will have to look at a national pig tattoo number scheme.
That is something the Canadian Pork Council and the provinces will work at together.
We, as a working committee, also unanimously support the zoning project planned for West Hawk Lake.
That is an initiative that has to move forward.
In the event of a break we need that surveillance there and we need a wall.
We can talk about border zones as being walls.
Even with an ID and traceability system in place, those walls provide valuable insurance in case we weren't able to contain a foreign animal disease."
McKerracher says the primary role of a national identification and traceability system is containment of foreign animal disease but the exercise is important on several fronts.
He says it will also provide the assurances foreign customers are looking for that Canada has the ability to consistently supply a safe quality product.
For Farmscape.Ca, I'm Bruce Cochrane.