Effective 1 July, under changes to Canada's Health of Animals Regulation, anyone who ships or receives pigs in Canada is required to report the movement of those animals to the PigTrace Canada database within seven days.

PigTrace in Action, Accomplishments to Date was among the topics discussed yesterday as part of Saskatchewan Pork Industry Symposium 2014 in Saskatoon.

Jeff Clark, the manager of PigTrace Canada, an initiative of the Canadian Pork Council, says options include reporting to the PigTrace.Ca web site through your internet browser or mobile device, by phone or by fax.

Jeff Clark-Canadian Pork Council:

If we look at the number of farms or premises reporting in Canada it's about 54 to 55 per cent.

That's about 4,300 premises in Canada out of about 8,000 and I think as of today which is November 18 it's almost 200,000 movement events since 1 July so it's pretty significant.

I think we're getting good buy in.

We have to keep it up, we have to fill in the gaps for people who aren't reporting, encourage them to report.

In terms of the types of tools that we have, I know the mobile browser has been very popular.

Not a lot of people have real good internet on their computers at home but they have mobile phones with pretty good cellular coverage so that's been a real hit is our mobile browser.

Some of the larger production companies and abattoirs in Canada have used our automated XML protocol which is basically if they already have the information in their system, instead of duplicating it it just sends it automatically to our system.

There's some work required on that but that alone has accounted for a lot of movements in PigTrace.

Mr Clark says Canadian Food Inspection Agency inspectors have started issuing letters of non-compliance and there will be a fine structure eventually possibly by early 2016.