The Canadian Pork Council is coordinating the development of the swine component of a national multi-species livestock tracebility system.

Jeff Clark, the manager of PigTrace Canada an initiative of the Canadian Pork Council, says planned amendments to the federal Health of Animals Regulations will allow swine tracebility including movement reporting and identification to come into full effect.

Jeff Clark-Canadian Pork Council

The biggest part of the regulation is the requirement for anyone housing or moving swine to report key movement information within 48 hours of departure or reception of animals, those being the premises ID of the site of departure, the destination, the license plate of the transport, as well as the date and time and the quantity of animal on the load and if there's any identifiers on the animals such as a shoulder slap tattoo for animals going to slaughter or a PigTrace swine ID tag those also need to be reported.

My understanding is CFIA has draft regulations before Justice Canada right now for legal opinion and comment and review.

They'll be published in Canada Gazzette-1 sometime this fall for a 30 day public comment period and based on the comments received there'll be changes made if need be.

Then it'll be published in Canada Gazzette-2 where it'll become Canadian law.

Potentially that could be before the end of 2010.

If not certainly I would think over the winter and early spring of 2011.

Mr Clark says tracebility has been talked about for a long time and, for the most part, stakeholders have been supportive and are ready to go once the new regulations come into effect.