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Farm-Scape, Episode 2285

Sask Pork is now officially licensed to deliver the US based Trucker Quality Assurance program in Saskatchewan.

The Saskatchewan Pork Development Board has been delivering the National Pork Board's trucker training program in Saskatchewan since the spring of last year and earlier this month the organization announced it has signed a licensing agreement with the US based agency to continue delivering the course.

Sask Pork producer services Manager Harvey Wagner reports about 650 transporters with Saskatchewan addresses have now taken the program and received certification.

The TQA program is a training and certification program for transporters who are hauling hogs and also apply as well to people who are working with hogs in the barn.

The National Pork Board developed this program about five years ago and made an amendment to it two years ago.

The concept behind it is just to teach some basic skills to people to understand the things that they can do to reduce the stress and improve the condition of the hogs during transportation.

Transportation is a very stressful time for hogs and anything you can do to reduce the issues with them is a real benefit.

What we do is we have a training program.

They go through about a two hour training program and then, at the end of that, they have an exam that they have to write and, if they pass the exam, they get a certificate and then they have delivery privileges to pretty much any plant in North America with that certificate.

There are some plants in the United States and also Canada, notably Mitchell's in Saskatoon, that require transporters to have taken the TQA training. Wagner says, under terms of the licensing agreement, the National Pork Board will supply program materials, process the exams and administer certification and maintain a database of certified truckers.

For Farmscape.Ca, I'm Bruce Cochrane.