The Canadian Food Inspection Agency is seeking input from the public on changes proposed to the Health of Animals Regulations to accommodate swine traceability.
Amendments proposed to Canada’s Health of Animals Regulations by the Canadian Food Inspection Agency to accommodate swine traceability will require custodians of pigs to identify all farmed pigs and farmed wild boars using approved methods and record and report all movements of pigs from birth or import, to slaughter or export.
The proposed regulation has been published in Canada 1 opening a 30 day public comment period, comments will be reviewed and any changes will be made prior to publication in Canada Gazette 2 at which point it will become law.
Jeff Clark, the manager of PigTrace Canada a Canadian Pork Council initiative, explains this is the first time that movement reporting will be required of any livestock sector.
Our feeling is and the industry’s feeling for all these years has been, if the goal is to really protect the Canadian pork industry, then we need to have involvement and participation by the entire industry.
If there’s a foreign animal disease outbreak whether it’s foot and mouth disease or swine cholera it affects everyone in terms of borders being closed, business being interrupted, exports being closed so we need to have participation by everyone and it’s very difficult to get 100 percent participation without a regulation.
That being said it’ll be quite an effort to continue to get everyone involved even with the reg but our feeling is it’ll help us along.
Clark encourages pork industry stakeholders to visit the PigTrace Canada web site at pigtrace.ca for details on the proposed changes and information on the process for making comments.
He notes the public comment period is open until August 13, 2012 but timelines for implementation of the new regulation are still uncertain.
