PigTrace, the National Swine Traceability Programme was among the topics discussed on Tuesday, 1 June, in Winnipeg as part of the Canadian Institute of Food Science and Technology and Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada biennial joint conference.

For any movement of live hogs both the sender and receiver will be required to report within 48 hours the date, time and location of loading, the destination and number of animals and the license plate number of the truck.

Canadian Pork Council national traceability program manager Jeff Clark says the hope is to have draft federal regulations finalized by the end of the year.

Jeff Clark-Canadian Pork Council

At this point I'm doing kind of a last round of consultations with our provincial boards right across Canada as well as any other groups that might be interested.

For example the Canadian Meat Council I did a consultation with but really anyone of interest in commenting on the regulations I would like to receive their feedback now.

The federal government or the CFIA will publish the draft regulation in Canada Gazette One, which has it open for a 30 day public comment period so my hope is we can receive as much industry comment before that happens.

Not to say we don't want industry commenting during the public comment period but if there's any changes that are required it's better if we do it now.

Once that 30 day public comment period ends we'll look at the input that we received, make modifications as necessary and publish in Canada Gazette Two which makes it law.
br> CFIA and ourselves within Canadian Pork Council, we're hoping we can achieve that before the end of 2010.

Mr Clark notes tools are now being developed that will make it easier for producers to report traceability information.

He hopes those tools will allow producers to report without even thinking about it.