The National Farm Animal Care Council says everyone has a responsibility for ensuring the success of Canada’s codes of practice for the care of farm animals.
The National Farm Animal Care Council is coordinating the revision of eight codes of practice for the care of farm animals in Canada.
A draft Pig Code of Practice is scheduled to be released for public comment June 1.
NFACC general manager and project coordinator Jackie Wepruk suggests everyone has a responsibility, not just for the pig code but for all the codes that are being updated, of ensuring these codes are successful.
Our codes of practice are our national understanding of animal care requirements and recommended practices so we have multiple users of the codes.
Of course they are intended to be useful to producers on the farm.
Certainly others also utilize the codes as reference documents for what is the industry doing and so this is an opportunity for industry to be able to deliver a positive message about how it cares for animals on the farm, what the expectations are and how the industry itself is advancing animal care.
It also ensures that we have a common understanding so that we’re all looking at the same document when we’re making decisions around animal welfare.
Some provinces utilize the codes in their enforcement activities and we want to ensure that there’s a level playing field as well as ensuring that we all have a common understanding around what those expectations are so that producers in particular are comfortable with the direction things are going in and others who are looking to the codes to give them direction as to what’s expected, what’s acceptable have that information in a way that allows them to carry out what ever responsibilities they may have in animal care.
Wepruk says the draft Pig Code of Practice will be released June 1, the public will have 60 days to make comments, those comments will then be reviewed by the Pig Code Development Committee and necessary changes will be made and she anticipates a new Pig Code of Practice will be in place by December 31.
