The manager of PigTrace Canada says fines for failing to report movements of live hogs could come into effect as early as later this year.
Effective July 1, 2014, under changes to Canada’s Health of Animals Regulation, the reporting of movements of live swine in Canada became mandatory.
Under the regulation both the shipper and receiver of hogs must report the number of pigs moved, their origin and destination, the time they were moved and the license number of the truck or trailer that did the transportation to the PigTrace Canada database within seven days of that movement.
Jeff Clark, the manager of PigTrace Canada, an initiative of the Canadian Pork Council, says, based on the number of pig premises that are reporting regularly, we’re at about 65 percent of movements being reported.
PigTrace is mandated by federal regulation so it’s the Canadian Food Inspection Agency that is responsible for enforcement.
Since the program came into effect July 1, 2014 mostly it’s been education.
There have been some letters of non-compliance written up and right now that’s really the highest level of correction you can get for not complying with the regulation, so still education mode.
There will be a fine structure coming in and it really depends on a lot of factors but I’m told it could be later this year, 2015.
I don’t know the levels of fines per say.
They are publicly available in a separate regulation.
Once that separate regulation is amended to include pigs we will know the specific infractions that could result in a fine.
What we’ve learned is, if someone has built up a history of letters of non-compliance and issues, they could see themselves being fined in the future.
Clark estimates 99 percent of our commercial farms throughout Canada have a Premise ID number.
He says there’s far more backyard hobby farmers in Canada that we didn’t know about and every day we’re hearing from new people that are just finding out about the program.
