The Manager of Quality Assurance and Animal Care Programs with Manitoba Pork is encouraging pork producers to be aware of pending changes to the pork industry’s on-farm food safety and animal care assurance program.
The Canadian Pork Council is preparing to transition to its new on-farm food safety and quality and animal care assurance program, Canadian Pork Excellence.
Mark Fynn, the Manager of Quality Assurance and Animal Care Programs with Manitoba Pork, told those attending the organization’s fall producer meetings last month in Niverville and Portage la Prairie it was time to revamp the current food safety assurance program and, with the new Code of Practice that came into place in 2014, it was time to update the animal care component.
The quality assurance programs are the way that we assess farms to show that they’re meeting the food safety standard and the animal care standard. It’s our proof to consumers that we’re doing what we’re saying we’re doing and showing the proof of it.
The biggest differences fall on the animal care side because we’re incorporating so many of the requirements that are in the new code of practice. All of the requirements are dealt with in one way or another in the animal care assurance program so we have to figure out how exactly we go ahead and assess those things.
On the food safety side it’s just relooking at what we’ve done in the previous food safety assurance program, CQA, and just making sure that we’re keeping up to date with what our market’s expectations are.
~ Mark Fynn, Manitoba Pork
Fynn says the latest draft of the Canadian Pork Excellence program will be trialed on 50 plus farms across Canada in the next few months to further improve the program. He says the hope is to have all of the program materials into the hands of producers in 2017 so they can become familiar with the expectations and, starting in 2018, producers will start joining the program as they go through their normal recertification cycle.
