Farmscape for May 18, 2006  (Episode 2143)

The Canadian Pork Council reports the latest communications from the provincial pork organizations indicate the switch to a new national tattoo numbering systems is on track for June 1st.

In order to accommodate the creation of national multispecies identification and traceability system for tracking the movement of livestock in Canada the provincial pork organizations are in the process of allocating new slap tattoo numbers which will be unique to each location which houses hogs.

CPC technical affairs specialist Francois Bedard says indications are that those provinces that have not yet made the switch to the numbering scheme will be ready to do so June 1st.

Clip-Francois Bedard-Canadian Pork Council 

Communication that we've received from the provincial pork organizations is June 2006 so we hope by the end of June that all tattoos will be allocated in Canada but there's a lot of work to be done in terms of communications with the processors and what not.

The provincial pork organizations have really stepped up in a sense and moved toward implementing that within their own province so some provinces are at different levels but the time line for completion is agreed upon, all provinces, and hopefully we'll be done at that time frame and if not there'll only be a few details to work out.

The importance of having a premise ID is to know exactly the location of where the animals are kept, assembled. disposed of and premise identification doesn't only stop at a producer level.

We want to know the IDs for auctions, assembly yards, slaughter plants, all different facilities and this information, through strict access in a sense, eventually will be a tool so that CFIA (Canadian Food Inspection Agency) can use this information to properly mitigate, let's say, a disease outbreak.

Bedard expects the registration of all premises where live swine are housed in Canada to be completed by the end of summer.

For Farmscape.Ca, I'm Bruce Cochrane.

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