Farmscape for June 28, 2013

The National Farm Animal Care Council says the Pig Code Development Committee will be looking for well reasoned constructive feedback when it considers final changes to its draft Code of Practice for the Care and Handling of Pigs in Canada.
The National Farm Animal Care Council released its draft updated Code of Practice for the Care and Handling of Pigs in Canada June 1 triggering a 60 day public comment period.
Changes are proposed in the areas of sow housing, space allowance for pigs, pain mitigation during painful procedures and guidelines for euthanasia.
National Farm Animal Care Council general manager Jackie Wepruk says constructive feedback will help the Pig Code Development Committee create a code that will serve the needs of everyone who will use it.

Clip-Jackie Wepruk-National Farm Animal Care Council:
It's really important that those providing feedback are providing well reasoned rational kinds of input that is going to be useful to the Code Development Committee.
It's not necessarily volume that's going to have an impact.
It's the constructive useful feedback that's going to enable the Code Development Committee to improve the code and create a document that's going to really have value for everyone who's going to be wanting to use it or expected to use it so volumes of feedback on just blanket statements are not necessarily going to be used by the Code Development Committee.
Of course everyone's aware of the different perspectives on these issues.
The Code Development Committee is well aware of the many pressures that are our there.
What they really need is constructive input that's going to help them to create a useable functional code that's going to position the industry for the future.

The public comment period ends August 3, after which the pig code development committee will review the comments and make final adjustments and a new Pig Code is expected to be in place by the end of this year.
For more information visit the National Farm Animal Care Council web site at NFACC.Ca.
For Farmscape.Ca, I'm Bruce Cochrane.

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