Farm-Scape, Episode 2042

The head of Humboldt, Saskatchewan based Big Sky Farms says the Canadian swine industry's new animal care assessment tool is the vehicle that allows producers to demonstrate their commitment to the proper care of livestock.

The animal care assessment tool was developed by the Canadian Pork Council along the lines of Canadian Quality Assurance, the national on farm food safety program for swine, and it is designed to integrate into that program.

Big Sky Farms President and CEO Florian Possberg says a few years ago questions were raised as to how animals are cared for on farms and the assessment tool offers something producers can take to the general public to say this is our seal of responsibility.

"People are more urbanized. They're more remote, more detached from where their food comes from and so we have to put in place mechanisms that provide assurance to our consuming and general public that we do things properly.

As producers we know that there's radical people out there that are going to dispute that we are responsible.

We don't think the extreme of the radicals we'll be able to satisfy but there's that huge general public that just want legitimate answers.

That's really what our exercise is about, is providing legitimate answers to legitimate questions. Boal stresses, what we need to understand is that countries in Eastern Europe and also South America will continue to struggle with disease issues which will constrain their market access.

She suggests a country like brazil, a country like Romania is years and years away from gaining access to high value markets like Japan and South Korea.

She predicts, in those high value markets, it's going to be competition between Canada and the US and maybe a couple of other existing players for awhile.

For Farmscape.Ca, I'm Bruce Cochrane.