In June 2013, the National Farm Animal Care Council's Pig Code Development Committee released its draft revised Pig Code of Practice.

During its 60 day public comment period the proposed updated code, which recommended changes in several key areas including housing for gestating sows, pain relief during painful procedures and space allowances, attracted over 47 hundred comments from pork industry stakeholders, animal welfare activists and the public from Canada, the United States and around the world.

Pig Code Development Committee chair Florian Possberg says final code, which was released last month, has been well received.

Florian Possberg-Pig Code Development Committee

We've had comments from the animal welfare activist groups that I think generally have been positive towards our code.

We've had comments from our producers and I would say generally they've been positive as well and I think our retail sector has looked at the work of the code and said what we've come up with is pretty reasonable.

At the end of the day I think our consumers, our industry, our producers can be quite pleased with the outcome of the code.

We've had way more positive reaction than any negative reaction to our final code.

Mr Possberg suggests we can be proud of the code of practice process we have in Canada for all major species of animal agriculture.

He says the consensus based approach to developing new codes of practice, which is unique to Canada, includes producers, scientists, industry people and government people and it seems like we've really come to a good place where our animals will be much better off.