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.

Farm-Scape, Episode 2130

The Saskatchewan Pork Development Board predicts the pork industries in western Canada will have the capability for full traceability from the finishing barn to the packing plant by this summer.

On May 1st swine producers in Saskatchewan began using new slap tattoo numbers, issued as part of a new national swine identification and traceability system which is being developed for integration into a new national multi-species identification and traceability system.

Producers in Manitoba and Alberta are scheduled to begin using their new numbers on June 1st.

The next step in the development of the new tacking system is the creation of a western slaughter database which will be used to compile and store information collected at the federally inspected packing plants.

Sask Pork Policy Analyst Mark Ferguson says the database will provide a central repository for information collected in Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba.

"In western Canada we don't really have an organized marketing system like in the east, in Ontario and Quebec, where they still have monopoly marketing boards so the western slaughter database is all about getting ourselves organized so we kind of have a central repository to know what hogs are going to what processor and then using this information in the event of a foreign animal disease.

The processing plants submit data on a daily basis regarding which animals and who's animals have come into the plant and what this is going to mean is that, in the next few months, we'll be able to have instant traceability from the finishing barn to the slaughter plant."

Ferguson notes the software to maintain the western slaughter database is now being developed and he expects that work to be complete by mid to late summer.

For Farmscape.Ca, I'm Bruce Cochrane.