The chair of the National Farm Animal Care Council’s Pig Code Development Committee reports the proposed update Pig Code of Practice has drawn broad public interest.
The National Farm Animal Care Council is coordinating the update of eight codes of practice for the care and handling of farm animals in Canada.
The 60 day public comment period for the proposed Pig Code of Practice ended Saturday and members of the committee that developed the draft code are scheduled to meet later this month to discuss comments and determine any changes that should be made before the code is finalized.
Pig Code Development Committee chair Florian Possberg says the pig code has captured the attention of a broad group of interests.
It’s drawn a lot of interest from all areas really, the general public, from special interest groups and from producers.
Our code probably has elicited more public comments than all of the other codes reviewed to date combined.
The item that seems to have gotten the most interest is how we house our pregnant sows.
In previous years gestation stalls were the norm and of course there seems to be a lot of interest from retailers and special interest groups and so on to move that too loose housing so there has been a lot of discussion around that particular item.
That being said there are other things that we get into like pain control for painful procedures like castration, like the amount of minimum space allocations for different classes of pigs and those sorts of things.
Possberg stresses the purpose of the public comment period is to get feedback from producers, from the general public, from industry so now the challenge for the committee is to look at all of these comments and decide what needs to be adjusted and why.
