Farmscape for October 2, 2009   (Episode 3310)

The Canadian Pork Council has launched the distribution of its traceability ear tags as part of the development of a national swine traceability system.

To improve the pork industry's ability to respond to an animal disease outbreak, the Canadian Pork Council is developing a national swine traceability system.

Traceability program manager Jeff Clark says the initial focus of the tag portion of the system is getting the tags into the breeding herds.

Clip-Jeff Clark-Canadian Pork Council:
Since most breeding animals have tags already for barn management purposes, we've tried to create a tag that can suit those needs as well so it's a very practical tag.

Again one of our key components to developing a traceability program is we want to make it valuable to the producer not just for fighting disease or potentially getting enhanced market access around the world but we want to try to create a business tool that can help producers do their business.

There's two types of tags.

One is kind of a rectangular shaped tag, the other is a triangular or trapezoid shaped tag.

Both of them will have printed on them a unique traceability number for the animal but there's also room on it for a barn management number that the producer can have custom printed on there with their order so it also suits the needs of their barn management.

On the reverse of the tag, the female portion, we make a few different options available.

One is a button, the other is a secondary panel and those are available in six different colors.

A third option is an RFID or electronic identifier button and that's only available in yellow.

I should also mention our male panel, the front of it, is yellow only as well.

The male panel itself is the national tag, it has our logo on there and we want that to be internationally recognized.

Clark says, as of now, producers in Manitoba and Saskatchewan can place orders and the other provinces will come on line within the next few days or the next few weeks.

For Farmscape.Ca, I'm Bruce Cochrane.

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