Farmscape for May 5, 2011   (Episode 3572)

The Saskatchewan Pork Development Board estimates a third of the province's pork producers have already been validated under the Canadian pork industry's Animal Care Assessment program.

The Animal Care Assessment program is a written set of protocols that help focus the attention of pork producers on animal care.

Effective January 1, 2012 completion of the ACA requirements will become a mandatory component of Canadian Quality Assurance, the Canadian pork industry's on-farm food safety program.

Saskatchewan Pork Development Board producer services manager Harvey Wagner says the industry has recognized the importance of showing producers are concerned about animal care.

Clip-Harvey Wagner-Saskatchewan Pork Development Board:
On the farms that have adopted the ACA we haven't seen any real huge change or expense that they have to make.

It's just more a matter of awareness and how they deal with the animals on a day to day basis.

Most people are producing pigs exactly to the ACA already.

I don't think there's going to be a lot of changes.

I think some people are a little nervous about it, they're apprehensive but we haven't seen any expensive changes to existing operations to date.

In Saskatchewan we have about a third of our farms on the ACA already.

We've had very little difficulty on those farms.

They've found some benefits.

They see that it helps with the management of their farm.

One of the big things is also it helps focus the training of the staff in terms of animal care.

It also makes staff and the operators like in owner-operator situations more aware of animal care on an everyday basis.

Because you're looking at it and you're trained for it and you have this protocol and you say, O.K. this doesn't meet the standards, I have to repair that piece of penning because it could injure the animal.

Little things like that, it just seems to make people aware.

Wagner says amalgamation of the Animal Care Assessment and Canadian Quality Assurance programs will help bring the Canadian pork industry more in step with its international trading partners and it will benefit producers in that they'll have one program with one validation.

For Farmscape.Ca, I'm Bruce Cochrane.

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