The chair of the National Farm Animal care Council’s Pig Code Development Committee says committee members are very close to finalizing a new Code of Practice for the Care and Handling of Pigs in Canada.
Members of the National Farm Animal Care Council’s Pig Code Development Committee, a committee of pork producers, practicing veterinarians, swine researchers and representatives of government and animal welfare organizations, met last week to discuss public comments on the draft updated Pig Code of Practice and consider final changes.
Committee chair Florian Possberg says key areas of discussion have centered on how we house pregnant sows, space allowance and enrichment for animals and pain mitigation.
Quite frankly we’re three years into this.
We had hoped to have this wrapped up after about the first year or so, year and a half.
We’ve actually just had our tenth meeting to deal with a code, the second one since we had the public comment period.
I think we’ve gotten agreement on a lot of the big issues but we still have a number of other things to deal with.
We have one more meeting slated for early January and then the whole process needs to go through an editing process and translation.
We expect editing and translation to take a couple of months so we’re looking at possibly mid-spring for release or there about.
It’s a little early to tell but I think we’re on track to get this code released the first half of 2014.
Possberg says, because the code has not yet been finalized, it’s too early to outline any final changes.
He says, it’s been a long hard process and, while there are still details to be finalized, committee members have come to a place where they can be proud of what they’ve come up with.
