Farmscape Canada

 



Average user rating:

3.0 out of 5.0

Rate this Article:

Name:
Email:
Comments:




Printer Friendly Version
CPC Working Group Unveils Draft National Swine Traceability System
Farmscape Staff

CPC Working Group Unveils Draft National Swine Traceability System

Farmscape Article 1922-September 24, 2005

 

Canadian swine producers are embracing a proposal that will ultimately allow authorities to immediately identify the origin of livestock in the event of a foreign animal disease outbreak.

 

Representatives of Canada's provincial pork organizations are getting their first look at the first draft of what will ultimately become part of a national livestock identification and tracking system.

 

The swine industry is one several livestock industries to have undertaken the creation of an identification and traceability system. While the systems will be unique from commodity to commodity, all are being be designed to integrate into a national multispecies system which will be overseen by the Canadian Livestock Identification Agency.

 

Hog Traceability Working Group Unveils Draft Proposal

Earlier this week a delegation representing the Canadian Pork Council’s Hog Traceability Working Group traveled to Abbotsford for the first of a whirlwind three-week cross-Canada series of consultation meetings. The delegation is outlining the details of the package being proposed for the hog industry to officials of the provincial pork organizations and gathering feedback.

 

Working group chairman Dennis McKerracher describes the package as, “The blueprint of how we see a national identification and traceability for the Canadian pork industry.”

 

“This is a true consultation and we’re looking for feedback from the provincial pork organizations,” McKerracher states. “What we are doing at this first round of consultations is lay out the work we been working on for the last two years.”

 

He explains, “The committee examined such questions as the why and the how in order to design a system that would address the identified needs. We will be laying out the three phased approach for our system, looking at phase one being premise registration and the national tattoo system, looking at phase two which will be more of the structure database and then looking towards phase three which is the implementation of the system.”

 

Time Frame for Consultations Tight

The committee is operating under a tight time frame. “We’re finishing our first round of consultations in early October and we hope to get together with the working committee sometime in mid-October,” states Canadian Pork Council Technical Affairs Specialist Francois Bedard.

 

This past week the delegation met with pork organization officials from B.C., Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba during meetings held in Abbottsford and Winnipeg. Next on the agenda are stops in New Brunswick, Ontario and Quebec before the first round of consultations ends October 5th.

 

Bedard points out, “The purpose of the consultation is to get some feedback, some information from the provincial pork organizations. So we’ll be organizing a technical working committee to look at the comments and the feedback and regroup and then head out on our second round.”

 

The second round of consultations, which will include a larger cross section of producers as well as industry stakeholders, will begin in November.

 

Sask Pork Welcomes Traceability Proposal

The Chair of Sask Pork, Shirley Voldeng who met with the four members of the working group delegation during their stop in Abbottsford, says, “It’s an exciting thing to be involved in.”

 

She describes the system as, “preventative...being able to respond to a foreign animal outbreak; being able to have real time information that the producer can access on where his animals had been moved and knowing where that information is going and providing a traceback system; and having a national repository for animal movement data so, in the event something happens, we can be right there.”

 

She explains, “The traceability allows us to respond to a potential foreign animal disease outbreak, which we hope doesn't happen but in the event it does, then this prepares us to know where all the pigs are being moved in Canada.”

 

“It’s a central place for this data. It provides real time information of where these movements are happening.”

 

She stresses, “We already have a fairly good system in place but this just combines it across the whole nation and coordinates the effort. It just adds another layer of being prepared.”

 

Proposed System Features Four Elements

Sask Pork General Manager Neil Ketilson, who was also part of the working group that developed the proposed system, took part in the Abbottsford session by telephone. He says there are four key elements on which provincial pork associations are being consulted.

 

“They are a new tattoo system that will be implemented sometime next spring. What we’re doing is talking about that and talking about the implications of implementation, talking about the numbering system, just to make sure we are consistent with what the provinces can and would like to do.”

 

“The second one is that we will require identification, a premise ID we call it, of all the locations in the province where people are raising animals and hogs. That will be part of this whole thing. People will need to register their premise location ID.”

 

“The third thing is we are working on an electronic database, we call it a processor slaughter database, where by we can track animals once they reach their final destination back to the original farm that they came from.”

 

Ketilson concludes, “The fourth piece in this whole thing, which will take a little bit longer to accomplish, is setting up an electronic database which will track all movement of animals as they move from one location to another, farm to farm.”

 

Committee Strives to Maintain Existing Infrastructure Wherever Possible

Manitoba Pork Council Foreign Animal Disease Specialist Jeff Clark, who is also a member of the traceability working group and who was on hand for the Winnipeg consultation, stresses, “We would like to use as much of the existing structure of the pork industry as possible and one of the key areas will be those final movements of those animals to the slaughter facility.”

 

He notes, “Producers already apply a slap tattoo to identify who will receive payment for those animals. We see that as a key opportunity to trace movements from that last barn facility to the processing plant.”

 

“That will require some standardizing of numbers. We will have to reallocate tattoo numbers to a number of our producers.”

Clark agrees, “Farm to farm movements will be more difficult. This will be maybe one to two years down the line.”

 

He stresses, “This is a key area where we’re doing our consultations with the pork boards and the public, to outline what some of our ideas are. We’re open to suggestions from others.”

 

Voldeng plans to take the information she gathered during her trip to Abbottsford back to the Sask Pork Board for further discussion. “The purpose of this consultation was to provide feedback at the meeting. There’s also always the opportunity for us to provide comments back.”

 

“When I take it to the board and just refresh them (they already know a lot of what's going on) but it will provide another place for comments [to be made] back to the committee.”

 

She stresses, “It [foreign animal disease] can happen. We saw it happen with foot and mouth disease in the UK and we don’t want it to happen that way here. We just want to be prepared.”

 

Stakeholders Urged to Plan to Participate in Round Two of Consultations

Bedard urges stakeholders to make themselves aware of the dates and times in their areas for round two of the consultations and to plan to participate.

 

“The draft proposal contains the specific elements of our traceability system,” he says. Adding, “It looks a little bit at the components, the time lines and the funding-cost options.”

 

“It’s important for all producers and industry stakeholders to make it to the consultations to voice their opinions and then to get a glimpse of what the future hog ID and traceability system will look like,” he concludes.

 

Staff Farmscape.Ca

Keywords: traceability
© Wonderworks Canada 2005
Home   |   News   |   Archive   |   Today's Script   |   About Us   |   Sponsors  |   Links   |   Newsletter  |   RSS Feed
www.farmscape.com © 2000-2019  |  Swine Health   |   Privacy Policy  |   Terms Of Use  |  Site Design