The Canadian pork sector’s new on farm food quality and animal care assurance program is ready to move into its final evaluation.
The development of the PigSAFE and PigCARE components of Canadian Pork Excellence will be updated as part of the 2018 Manitoba Swine Seminar, Wednesday and Thursday in Winnipeg.
Mark Fynn, the Manager of Quality Assurance and Animal Care Programs with Manitoba Pork says the update started in 2014 in response to changing consumer expectations in terms of both food safety and animal care.
We took almost two and a half years to get to the stage that we’re at now in developing a draft program on farm. We had different committees set up to do that, one committee looking at the food safety elements, one at animal care, one overseeing the whole thing and then also looking to bring in the veterinarians that go on farm every year and do the assessments to look at the program and make sure that we’ve dealt with those issues.
With those committees in place we managed to develop a draft and that was pilot tested on about 70 to 80 farms across Canada. We wanted to make sure that we’re dealing with the risks and the standards on farm but we also want to make sure it’s practical in how we implement the program.
We went through that stage and learned a lot and we’ve gone through and we’ve developed a second draft which is now just about ready for a final review by a group of producers. After that point we’re looking like we’re going to be off to the races in the summer time of this year to get that sent out to farms and do a soft launch and do all the training that’s required to make sure we have a successful full launch of the program by January of 2019.
~ Mark Fynn, Manitoba Pork
Fynn says those involved in the pilot testing of the fist draft provided great feedback and a new group evaluating the second draft is providing a second set of eyes and a fresh perspective.
