The National Farm Animal Care Council has kicked off the process of updating the 2001 Recommended Code of Practice for the care and handling of farm animals: Transportation.
Last month the Canadian Food Inspection Agency unveiled the changes to Canada’s Health of Animals Regulations governing the transport of animals that will come into effect one year from now.
In response, the National Farm Animal Care Council has started the process of updating the Transport Code of Practice.
NFACC General Manager Jackie Wepruk says, even without the regulatory changes, an update was needed to allow industry to respond to current research and market development as well as to compliment the 14 individual species codes have been developed.
Everything from the structure of the code itself, who needs to be engaged and how to map out the information that will be needed is really being considered. Right now at a very practical level we’re considering how to ensure that everyone who needs to be involved can be without ending up with an unwieldy number of committee members.
So there’s a tremendous amount of time and energy invested in getting the process structure right. For example how many working groups are we going to need and who needs to be involved and at what level versus the working group level or the code committee level?
We’re also cognizant that, while the transportation code needs to provide complimentary guidance on the regulations that support industry awareness and implementation, it can’t just be parroting what’s in the regulation so the challenge is going to be figuring out how to best frame the information and provide guidance around meeting those regulatory requirements in a really usable fashion.
The code itself is envisioned to take a modular format, so one where people can easily identify and access those portions that are relevant to them and so that accessibility and ease of understanding will be really important factors going forward.
~ Jackie Wepruk, National Farm Animal Care Council
For more information or to provide input visit the National Farm Animal Care Council web site at NFACC.ca.
