The Director of PigTRACE Canada says 2018 will see a stepped effort to encourage anyone not already reporting pig movements to begin doing so.
The reporting of all movements of pigs became mandatory in Canada in 2014.
Jeff Clark, the Director of PigTRACE Canada an initiative of the Canadian Pork Council, notes a number of changes are in the works for federal livestock movement reporting regulations as movement reporting becomes mandatory for additional species of livestock.
For PigTRACE, 2018, we’re really looking at reaching back out to producers for the first time in terms of, if you’re not reporting movement, it’s a reminder to do so. How can we help you? We realize not everyone is technically literate so we have other ways of doing it. We will be a little bit more proactive in that way. Also there’s some regulatory changes that are coming to the federal regulations, mostly targeted at the other species. There will be full movement reporting for cattle, sheep, goats, deer and for pigs it offers us an opportunity to make some tweaks.
The pig sector is the first in Canada to have a national traceability program, full traceability not just tags, full movement reporting. We’ve been doing it for almost four years so we want to improve the requirements, make it a little bit more practical for our industry. At the same time we want to remind everyone of the good benefits of doing it and starting to reach out and say if you’re not doing it already it’s time to start. We know how many farms are out there, we can see how many farms have reported in a period of time, we can see how many animal movements are reported.
If I had to give a number, I know roughly across Canada about 70 percent of all farms are reporting movements. Some of those farms might be empty. We don’t know that for sure. As a whole I’d say most of our big players are reporting. What’s really interesting is even the back yard hobby farmers, they’re really on the program. They’ll report. It’s much simpler for them, they’re only doing a few movements a year so, by and large, I think we have good compliance with this program.
~ Jeff Clark, Canadian Pork Council
For more information on mandatory pig movement reporting visit pigtrace.ca.
