Farm-Scape, Episode 1663

Swine producers enrolled in Canadian Quality Assurance will soon receive their newly revised program materials.

As a follow-up to the completion of the Canadian Food Inspection Agency review of the swine industry's national on farm food safety program, the producer manual and supporting materials have been revised.

Updated packages are now being distributed to producers through the provincial offices. Canadian Quality Assurance National Coordinator Dawn Lawrence says the first thing producers will notice is the package has a whole new look.

"We have taken a little different approach to the content of the binder. We still have the assessment form but it's not in a booklet anymore.

We've changed it to a loose leaf format so that, when in the future we make changes, we won't have to send out a new book to producers.

We can simply replace the changed pages and producers don't have to go through all the work of filling out an entire booklet when we do make those changes.

The producer manual section, the good production practices have been expanded, we've updated information and we have a couple of new chapters.

The feed information that used to be in several chapters is now all on its own and we have a new chapter called deviation and corrective action.

It is a chapter that just helps producers create their contingency plans, the question, 'what would you do if something went wrong?'

That helps them out there. The web site has information, it has producer profiles, frequently asked questions, a little bit of a history of the program so producers who are interested can go to the web site which is cqa-aqc.com. We've also included downloadable files of all the program materials."

Lawrence says it's not quite ready but an interactive assessment form will soon be added to the web site and the assessment form and producer manual will also be made available on CD-ROM.

For Farmscape.Ca, I'm Bruce Cochrane.