The National Farm Animal Care Council’s Pig Code Development Committee expects a new Code of Practice for the Care and Handling of Pigs to be ready for publication by mid-2013.
The Pig Code of Practice was last updated in 1993.
The National Farm Animal Care Council’s Pig Code Development Committee, which is made up of pork producers, practicing veterinarians, swine researchers and representatives of government and animal welfare organizations, has been working on revising the code for just over a year.
Committee Chair Florian Possberg says all aspects of pig care are being covered.
Some of the things that we do in animal welfare are very supportive to the viability of the industry.
Some of the things around animal welfare that are being imposed on production systems around the world, quite frankly, are quite negative to the viability of the industry.
We’re just trying to find the right balance.
There’s things like how we deal with compromised animals, there’s sensitive issues like how we group our sows, whether they’re in stalls or in group housing, painful procedures like castration is one of the things that we’re looking at.
My goal is at the end of the day the environment, the welfare of our animals will be better off and it’ll be based on good sound scientific principles and common sense things.
I don’t want to see us just be reactive to the flavor of the day in imposing something because it’s popular but not necessarily going to help our animals so we need to be sensitive to that.
We all want to be good stewards for our animals.
Possberg expects the first draft of the new code to be ready this summer, it will be revised based on stakeholder input and the goal is to have the revised code ready for publication by June or July of 2013.
