Farmscape for July 19, 2006  (Episode 2198)

The National Farm Animal Care Council says revision of Canada's codes of practice for the care and handling of livestock will be among its main priorities as the organization moves into its second year of operation.

The National Farm Animal Care Council, inaugurated in August of last year, operates along the lines of provincial

farm animal councils in Ontario, Manitoba, Saskatchewan and Alberta but with a more national focus.

Council coordinator Jackie Wepruk explains the development of national codes of practice began in the 1980s and there are now codes for virtually every species of farmed animal but many need to be updated.

Clip-Jackie Wepruk-National Farm Animal Care Council 

Probably the main focus for the National Farm Animal Care Council at this point is codes of practice.

Originally the Canadian Federation of Humane Societies provided secretariat services for their development and then that role moved to the Canadian Agrifood Research Council and they facilitated the process of code development but, in 2001, funding for the code process stopped and the last code of practice was developed in 2003.

The work that the council is currently working on is getting that code process up and running again and working with all the different interest groups to hammer out, what do we see for codes of practice for the future?

We're developing a code guideline document that we've been consulting with industry players and others to see if this is the direction that we want to go in with codes of practice and we're hopeful that the first code of practice will be revised...hopefully before year end we'll be working on getting new codes of practice going again.

Wepruk notes most codes are already in place so it's really a matter of updating codes that are ten plus years old and need revision.

For Farmscape.Ca, I'm Bruce Cochrane.

       *Farmscape is a presentation of Sask Pork and Manitoba Pork Council