The Manager of PigTrace Canada reports the system that will accommodate the reporting of swine movements is now operational.
To accommodate swine traceability, the Canadian Food Inspection Agency is revising Canada’s Health of Animals Regulation to, for the first time, require the reporting of all movements of pigs.
Jeff Clark, the Manager of PigTrace Canada an initiative of the Canadian Pork Council, says January 1, 2014 has been targeted as the official launch date for mandatory reporting.
We’ve developed, the PigTrace database.
It’s a web application.
You can go on line directly to it through our web site, PigTrace.Ca.
It allows a producer to log into the database securely, see their account information, the premises that we have them associated with and they can report movements to and from their premises.
Some of the technology that goes in behind the database allows us to reach out and touch existing systems so, if people are running commercial herd management software in their barns, the PigTrace database is able to receive information from those systems so we’re not duplicating inventory tracking.
We want to make use of as many existing systems as possible and the PigTrace database has been built in that way that it can accept information from outside systems.
By June of this year we will be distributing all across Canada instruction booklets.
We’ve already had them printed and packaged.
It gives the details of the program, some of the technical instructions on how to get into the system and at that time we’re really going to be pushing the industry to check out the database, start using it.
Let’s get some experience behind us well ahead of this becoming a mandatory program under a regulation.
Clark says deployment of the system, which involves setting up producers accounts and entering premises information into the database, is complete in his home province, Manitoba and Manitoba producers can now start submitting movements.
