Farm-Scape, Episode 2019

In an effort to ensure Canada's swine producers are kept up to date on developments related to traceability Canadian Pork organizations plan to adopt a nationally coordinated communications approach.

Last month the Canadian Pork Council's National Hog Identification and Traceability System Working Group completed the second of two rounds of producer consultations looking at a proposed system for tracking the movement of hogs in Canada and it's now preparing to move forward with implementation of the system.

CPC Technical Affairs Specialist Francois Bedard says a draft communications framework is scheduled to be examined later this month.

"There's a communications working committee that involves staff people from each provincial organization. They meet several times a year. They've outlined or developed a draft framework in terms of a communications strategy for the ID and traceability system itself.

We don't want necessarily want producers in British Columbia and producers in Quebec receiving two different messages. It's just a way to coordinate the information that comes from the Canadian Pork Council, the provincial pork organizations in terms of having it consistent all across Canada.

Who will be impacted? It's producers. It's communication for them in order for us to inform them of what we're doing and the elements that will help them to move forward to implement the components."

Bedard says the committee is scheduled to meet in late January to move that framework ahead and put more detail to it.

As for implementation of the traceability system itself, he reports, the planned introduction of the four key elements, a new national tattoo system, premise identification and registration, a western slaughter database and reporting of animal movement remains on schedule.

For Farmscape.Ca, I'm Bruce Cochrane.