The Canadian Pork Council expects to begin testing a new system for tracking farm to farm movements of swine this coming summer.
The Canadian Pork Council is overseeing the development of the swine component of a national multi-species traceability system.
Pig Trace includes premise identification, market tattoos and tracking of slaughter movement, ear tag identification of breeding stock and movement reporting.
CPC manager of national traceability Jeff Clark says early adoption trials for movement reporting are set for this coming summer.
The movement reporting we’ve always felt could be the most complicated part of it, not so much because it is complicated itself but just because it really involves the entire industry.
So very basic data fields, that would be the date and time of movement, where you’re located so you report your premise ID or your farm name, where you’re sending them to, the number of animals on the load and the license plate of the load.
Those are the core data fields but the complications come in, how do we get that information into the system, how do we make it cost effective and how do we make it practical.
Some of our solutions so far are working with the software companies who do production management software already for many of our producers.
The software companies are interested in modifying their products for us so they can submit traceability information on behalf of the producers.
We’re also looking at working with the transport companies who already collect information themselves.
Could they pass on traceability information for the producer.
We’re looking at a whole variety of options for getting information into the system.
We really don’t want to have to rely on phone calls or faxes or things of that nature.
We want to make it automated, we want to make it easy for the producer so we’re hoping to do some early trials in the summer of 2010 with some early adopting producers to try out some of these ideas.
Clark says traceability is primarily about crisis management related to foreign animal disease and food safety but the system is also expected to provide a market access advantage.
Source: Farmscape.Ca
