Farmscape for August 15, 2005  (Episode 1885)

Stakeholders within the Canadian swine industry will have the opportunity to provide input on a draft blueprint for a national traceability system this fall.

The Canadian Pork Council's Hog Traceability Working Group has scheduled consultations to give stakeholders an opportunity to provide input on a proposed national swine traceability system.

The proposed blueprint outlines how farms and animals will be identified and establishes methods for tacking the animals.

Working Group Chair Dennis McKerracher says there will be two rounds of consultations, with the first scheduled for the end of next month and the second for late October or early November.

Clip-Dennis McKerracher-Canadian Pork Council

These consultations are really designed to address the fact that before a national program is launched it is important that all the stakeholders who will be involved in its delivery comment on the structure and the feasibility.

This is a true consultation where we have mapped out or we have a blueprint of the how of traceability and now we're looking for the provincial pork organizations to comment on that.

After the comments have been received we will look at our system again and then we will come back out to the country and look at a second round of consultations which will involve the larger audience, members of the value chain.

It's really to explain the involvement of the provinces in the system with regards to farm registry, tattooing of the animals and the involvement of what the producers would have to do at the farm level.

The plan calls for premise registration, tattoo number standardization and establishment of a national slaughter database by the spring of 2006 and a national hog tracing system by the winter of 2007.

For Farmscape.Ca, I'm Bruce Cochrane.

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