Farmscape for December 14, 2012

The National Farm Animal Care Council expects to meet a June 1, 2013 target for the start of the public comment period on a revised Pig Code of Practice.
The National Farm Animal Care Council's Pig Code Development Committee is drafting a revised Pig Code of Practice.
The pig code outlines acceptable practices for the commercial production of pigs and covers everything from housing and space allocation to nutrition and care, to procedures for dealing with compromised animals.
Pig Code Development Committee chair Florian Possberg notes the code was last revised in 1993.

Clip-Florian Possberg-Pig Code Development Committee:
The way we raise animals continues to evolve.
We have different facilities and ways of providing environmental control and all those things.
As well I think the general public, how they view animals and what's acceptable care, has evolved as well.
We're living in an environment now where fewer and fewer people have farm backgrounds so the general public, who perhaps do not have the roots in rural Canada, they just want to know that we're being good stewards of our animals.
Because of some of the publicity around a video in Manitoba recently there's likely a heightened level of public concern.
We are working as diligently as we can to put forward what is good sound stewardship for Canadian hog farmers so it really does underline the importance and necessity of us doing this and doing it right.

Possberg says a few items still need to be clarified before the new code is drafted then it will need to be edited and translated into French.
He expects that process to take until mid to late spring and that's when the committee expects to release the draft code to the general public for comment.
For farmscape.Ca, I'm Bruce Cochrane.

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