Amendments proposed to Canada's Health of Animals Regulations to accommodate swine traceability were announced July 14 and the Canadian Food Inspection Agency is accepting comments from the public until August 13.

A series of webinars set for this week will explain the proposed amendments and the process for making comments.

Jeff Clark, the manager of PigTrace Canada, says under the proposed regulations producers will be required to identify all pigs and, for the first time, record and report all movements of pigs.

Jeff Clark-Canadian Pork Council:

The regulatory development has taken a great number of years in terms of developing the program between industry and government, doing the consultation period which is required for any regulation and then finally bringing it to publication.

Now we're at the public comment period.

There's a real effort being made on my part and my colleagues part to inform industry as much as possible and specifically animal handlers.

Anyone who is involved in the raising or buying and selling of pigs will be affected by this regulation.

We really want to make sure that those individuals are informed of these new requirements, have an opportunity to learn about them, ask questions and if they have any comments to direct them towards the federal government before the deadline which is August 13, 2012.

Mr Clark encourages anyone interested in participating in the webinars to send their name and email address to [email protected].

English sessions are set for tomorrow at 2:00 pm Eastern and Thursday at 10:00 am Eastern and a French session is set for Wednesday at 1:00 pm Eastern.

For Farmscape.Ca, I'm Bruce Cochrane.