Canada's revised Pig Code of Practice, made public last month, contains changes in the areas of sow housing, pain mitigation during painful procedures and environmental enrichment.

The Prairie Swine Centre was one of several research organizations that provided research data to the scientific committee that advised the 17 member Pig Code Development Committee.

Prairie Swine Center president and CEO Lee Whttington says the broad public involvement in the process has created a win win situation.

Lee Whttington-Prairie Swine Centre

The code is really quite unique to Canada in that all aspects of society have been represented.

That includes the industry and government in addition to the humane societies that were participating.

I think one of the important aspects of it that, being a negotiated code, it represents the best thinking and being informed by science of the time and it involves not having litigation and various types of political pressures being brought upon it which has been typical in other parts of the world where welfare not just for pigs but welfare for domesticated livestock is involved.

So I think this code has been a real win from that perspective because it considers the pig, it considers the science of what we know and it considers the needs of the pork producer.

Mr Whittington suggests the next couple of steps will be for the code to be reviewed by industry and incorporated into the animal care assessment which is part of the Canadian Quality Assurance Programme.

From there he expects the various deadlines to flow from the code into the Animal Care Assessment so we're really looking at the first changes within the next two years.