The Canadian Pork Council is confident amalgamating its on-farm food safety and animal care assessment programs will strengthens the position of Canadian pork producers.
Effective January 1, 2012 completion of the Animal Care Assessment requirements will become a mandatory component of the Canadian Quality Assurance Program, the Canadian pork industry's on-farm food safety program.
Canadian Pork Council associate executive director Catherine Scovil explains the Animal Care Assessment was introduced in 2005 as a voluntary stand-alone program designed along the same lines as the Canadian Quality Assurance Program to address a growing public interest in how pork producers raise food.
Clip-Catherine Scovil-Canadian Pork Council:
The Animal Care Assessment or ACA as we call it is a program that's been put together to help producers show they take good care of their animals.
We certainly know that producers are doing this already.
The program simply helps them demonstrate this and to tell their story.
We had originally designed the Animal Care Assessment Program to be imbedded in the CQA Program because we didn't want a proliferation of programs out there for producers, we wanted it streamlined.
They ended up being rolled out separately because the CQA Program has been out for a much longer time period so the idea in 2005 was let's roll this out gently, give producers a chance to get familiar with it before we make it a mandatory part of CQA.
It had always been in our horizon that these two programs would be linked.
We have done this now, effective January 1, 2012 because we thought the time was right and to really just streamline the programs, to make it seamless, to make sure it comes across as one program that is addressing both food safety and animal care.
Scovil says the ACA responds to those looking for more information about what happens on hog farms.
She notes it's not every day that someone gets to visit a farm but they are interested in how their food is raised and this program allows producers to tell their story and respond to the tough questions.
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