Canadian pork producers are being advised compliance with the Canadian Ractopamine-Free Pork Certification Program will be much more closely monitored in the future.
The Canadian Ractopamine-Free Pork Certification Program is an industry driven program to assure international customers their pork is free of Ractopamine.
Dr. Egan Brockhoff, an Alberta based swine veterinarian, says producers need to be aware of just how critical this program is to maintaining the Canadian pork industry’s access to global markets.
We received word from China that they are going to be pushing harder on how they are auditing and supervising these programs. Previously when countries have violated it they have ended up losing market access to China for a year. It’s my understanding that that potential number could be much longer this time so it’s critical that we take this as serious as anything we’ve ever done. We really want to do everything we can to ensure you don’t go through a major deviation. A minor deviation is a fairly straight forward corrective action and we can deal with those very simple.
If you don’t have a letter of guarantee, that’s a minor deviation. If your feed invoices don’t say this diet was Ractopamine-free, that’s a minor deviation. If Ractopamine arrives on your farm, that’s a major deviation. If you have a farrow to finish farm and Ractopamine arrives at your site and gets fed to the grower pigs, unfortunately every pig in that barn goes off the Ractopamine-free certification program.
Our international trading partners look at the program and say, if there was Ractopamine introduced to the barn then the whole barn is taken off the program. ~ Dr. Egan Brockhoff – Prairie Swine Health Services
Dr. Brockhoff says Ractopamine-free access adds $300 to $500 million per year to the volume of Canadian pork sold and is a critical component for pork industry.
