Manitoba has allocated 400 thousand dollars to fund a new premises identification database, which will contain information already being collected, to integrate into a new national livestock traceability system.

Stan Struthers, Manitoba's minister of Agriculture Food and Rural Initiatives, says the province has been working with livestock producers to ensure we have a swift thorough method of identifying premises where there may be animal health issues.

Stan Struthers-Manitoba Minister of Agriculture Food and Rural Initiatives

We need to be in a good position to make sure that we can respond if we come across a disease situation.

We've seen other countries have some real struggles when it comes to dealing with containing disease events so we wanted to get ahead of the curve on this.

I really appreciate the advice that we got from all of the groups that we've worked with.

We also want this to fit into the national traceability system that we're working across the country to get in place.

My federal colleague and my provincial and territorial colleagues have committed ourselves to 2011 in terms of having a national system in place.

This puts us ahead of the curve here in Manitoba.

We already have very good uptake from dairy farmers and hog producers and poultry producers.

We've been working with sheep growers, we've been working with cattle producers so we're well ahead of the target but by 2011 we hope across the country to have a workable process in place.

The new database will contain information such as legal land descriptions and emergency contact information to be used only for the purpose of dealing with animal health issues.

Mr Struthers says whether it be anything from avian flue to hoof and mouth disease we need to prepared and this information will be very valuable.