Farm-Scape, Episode 1667

The Canadian Pork Council says 2005 will be a critical year for forwarding efforts aimed at establishing a national livestock identification and traceability system.

The Canadian Pork Council is due to receive a draft report this week from a series of pilot studies conducted across Canada.

CPC National Identification and Traceability Committee Chair Dennis McKerracher says the report will provide insight into potential identifiers and costs in recommending an ID and traceability system and now the challenge is to bring all of the provinces up to speed.

"2005 is a critical year when you look at the whole time line that was developed a couple of years ago by the Canadian Pork Council and agreed upon by member provinces.

The pilot studies are now complete so it's now time to take action on the results of those pilot studies and it's time to complete, in '05, the different action items that have to be done in each of the provinces.

What we have to do is make sure that producer registration in each province is up to date and accurate. We also have to, with an ID and traceability system of course, know where the pigs are.

The premises will have to be identified in the provinces and we'll use the Canadian livestock industry association's requirements to determine how we will do that.

Also in Canada we recently completed a survey on our tattoo number system. We have to look at eliminating some of the duplication that occurs in that system and also we have to stop the use of non registered tattoo numbers."

McKerracher stresses the identification and traceability initiative is important on several fronts.

He says, while its primary role is containment of foreign animal disease, it will also provide foreign customers the assurances they are looking for that Canada has the ability to consistently supply a safe quality product.

For Farmscape.Ca, I'm Bruce Cochrane.