The manager of PigTrace Canada expects the reporting of movements of pigs within Canada to accommodate swine traceability to become Mandatory this summer.
The Canadian pork industry has been working on the development of a traceability program for swine since 2002 and that program is now ready for launch.
Jeff Clark, the manager of PigTrace Canada an initiative of the Canadian Pork Council, says the program will require the reporting of movement information when animals are received or shipped.
We expect the federal government to formally publish the regulatory amendment to the Health of Animals regulation this fall and in there we expect it to announce July 1, 2014 as the official coming into force date of the regulation where it will be mandatory.
The program requires the reporting of movement information when you receive or ship animals.
That movement information includes the source or destination of the load of animals, the license plate, the date and time animals were loaded, the number of animals as well as any animal identification numbers that are on them.
Anyone handling pigs will have to comply with the regulations.
They’ll have to report.
They will have seven days to report that movement information although we want to get it as close to real time as possible.
If the information isn’t reported within seven days then the value of that information is a lot less than it would be if we had it real time or within a day or so.
It would help us a lot better at responding to foreign animal disease issues or food safety issues.
Clark notes movement reporting tools, two of which are web based and accessible through the PigTrace.Ca web site on a computer or on any kind of smart phone are now available and all producers and pork value chain partners such as abattoirs and assembly yards will be issued their own log-in accounts and passwords.
He says the third movement reporting tool is intended to interface with herd management software to allow information to be submitted to PigTrace directly to allow producers to avoid the need to enter the information more than once.
