Farm-Scape, Episode 2144

The Canadian Pork Council has asked the Canadian Food Inspection Agency to move forward with Health of Animals Act amendments to accommodate pork industry efforts to develop a national identification and traceability system for swine.

As part of a national initiative to create a multispecies identification and traceability system the Canadian swine industry has revamped its tattoo numbering system and is now registering all premises where live hogs are housed.

The intent is to have the ability to track the movement of swine from farm to farm and from the farm to the packing plant by 2008. CPC technical affairs specialist Francois Bedard says amendments to the health of animals act are necessary to accommodate needs specific to swine production.

We requested the amendment of the health of animals act because the hog industry is not represented in those regulations. There's some for sheep, cattle, bison in terms of ID and traceability but not for hogs.

There's major differences in terms of regulations that are there currently for, let's say, the cattle program. Some of our requirements that we've developed for specific animal identification are different so we need to address those issues. We've never hid the fact that the current regulations for the cattle ID program are not functionally adequate for our industry and it wouldn't be acceptable for the hog industry to follow the same ID program as, let's say, the cattle industry.

First of all our industry is structured differently, movements of animals are quite different than the cattle industry so we need to address those issues.

Bedard notes it could take 18 months to complete the amendments to the Health of Animals act and, while no specific time frame has been set, the desire is complete the process in time to accommodate full traceability by 2008.

For Farmscape.Ca, I'm Bruce Cochrane.

Farm-Scape is sponsored by Manitoba Pork Council and Sask Pork Farm-Scape is a Wonderworks Canada production and is distributed courtesy of Manitoba Pork Council and Sask Pork.