Farmscape for January 3, 2006  (Episode 2347)

The Manitoba Farm Animal Council says new initiatives being developed by Canada's farm animal care councils are intended to assist those who handle all species of livestock to improve the well being of the animals under their care.

Farm animal care councils in Ontario, Manitoba, Saskatchewan and Alberta are working with the national association to develop a series of training initiatives designed to help those who handle livestock improve the safety and well being of animals during loading and transportation.

Manitoba Farm Animal Council executive director Shanyn Silinski says the effort is intended to bring together transportation, humane handling and animal welfare.

Clip-Shanyn Silinski-Manitoba Farm Animal Council 

We feel that it's important that that key component of the agriculture industry is trained properly.

The pork haulers obviously have the TQA (Trucker Quality Assurance) program but there really isn't anything that covers all species for all truckers and that includes producers hauling their own livestock.

We wanted to make sure that we were covering those areas with these new training initiatives that we're developing and we're working closely with the other farm animal councils in Canada as well as other agencies, veterinarians, transportation, to make sure that the training we are developing can be multijurisdictional as well as it covers as many bases as possible.

And we're working on different modes of delivery to make it accessible to people that live in rural areas, obviously truckers are on the road a lot and for people that have budgetary considerations, we want to make sure that it's deliverable in a number of formats to reach as many people as possible from producers all the way up to trucking companies and industry representatives that would be taking it back through commodity groups.

Silinski says the intent is not to replace existing programs but to augment them and to tie everything together into one package.

She says the various components will be made available at various stages and people will be able to access them in such a way that it will be most beneficial to their organization or their needs.

For Farmscape.Ca, I'm Bruce Cochrane.

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