Farmscape for November 2, 2006  (Episode 2291)

The Industry Government Advisory Committee on Traceability has agreed to an initial vision of what a national multispecies identification and traceability system should look like.

The Industry Government Advisory Committee was assembled to advise the Federal Provincial Territorial Traceability Task Team and includes representation from Canada's national livestock and poultry groups, existing traceability service providers, federal, provincial and territorial governments and federal regulatory agencies.

Canadian Livestock Identification Agency President Dennis McKerracher says the first priority will be establishing premise registration and individual and group animal identification by December 2007 focusing on cattle, hogs, sheep and poultry.

Clip-Dennis McKerracher-Canadian Livestock Identification Agency 

The reason the focus is on those four to start with is cattle and sheep already have regulations, hogs are presently in the process of having the discussions on regulations with the Canadian Food Inspection Agency.

Also there's a higher urgency with regards to export dependence also foreign animal disease strategies.

Poultry, we don't have to go too far back too far in history to recognize the challenges poultry has had with regards to avian influenza.

The poultry sector also has a very credible provincial registry  and have very good systems in place today with regards to knowing the movements of their birds to the farm, from the farm so it makes a lot of sense to work on those four, there again, not saying anybody else is as important but when it comes to some of the international concerns and trade concerns.

McKerracher says the committee has made significant progress in agreeing to broad national standards but issues like  who will pay for the system and who will be authorized to access the data require further discussion.

The committee is scheduled to meet again later this month and is expected to report to government early in the new year.

For Farmscape.Ca, I'm Bruce Cochrane.

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