By Amanda Brodhagen, Farms.com
Over the past year, Canadian pork producers have been gearing up to implement a new traceability system known as PigTrace Canada. The program becomes mandatory effective on Canada Day, July 1st.
Canada’s Health of Animals Regulations was recently amended to bring into law the requirement for swine traceability, a condition for all pig farms nationwide. The program will collect and store information about the movement of hogs.
The PigTrace system will accumulate information about the local farm and the destination of a truck load of hogs, licence plate information of the truck or trailer transporting pigs, and information about the number of livestock on a load. The new program aims to track hogs along the distributing chain, which then allows government officials to be able to deal with problems quickly if they should arise.
Each province is communicating with their producers on how to administer the program. Ontario Pork, which is home to some of the largest swine herds in the country, are hosting a telephone town hall on July 4th to talk to farmers about the new system. The call is from 12:00 to 1:00pm.
Groups including the Canadian Pork Council say that the traceability system will be especially useful to be able to track diseases like the porcine epidemic diarrhea (PED) virus, which has infected barns in several Canadian provinces and thousands of pig herds in the United States.
The tracking system bolsters food safety, business management, market access opportunities and provinces financial stability and provides peace of mind to pork producers.
More information about the PigTrace system can be found by visiting: http://pigtrace.ca/.