The chair of the National Farm Animal Care Council’s Pig Code Development Committee says the update of Canada’s Pig Code of Practice is on track for completion by mid-spring.
The National Farm Animal Care Council’s Pig Code Development Committee met last month to discuss public comments on a draft updated Code of Practice for the Care and Handling of Pigs in Canada and consider changes before the code is finalized.
Pig Code Development Committee chair Florian Possberg notes about 47 hundred comments were received on the draft pig code during the public comment period, more than for all of the other codes developed to date combined.
You know, particularly how we house our pregnant sows is something that’s very high profile but we also get into space allowance and enrichment for our animals and pain mitigation, all those things.
At this point we haven’t finalized our code so it’s too early to express what those changes are but I think we’ve come an awful long ways in coming to consensus on these difficult areas and we’ve still got details to work out and that sort of thing.
But, if we can finalize things, we’ll be having some conference calls between now and early January then we will have a face to face to put the final touches on what we will send to the editor.
We expect editing and translation to take a couple of months so we’re looking at possibly mid-Spring for release or there abouts.
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 acknowledges it’s been a long hard process but he believes the committee has come to a place where its members can be proud of what they’ve accomplished.
