The Canadian Pork Council expects to have a working swine traceability system in operation on a voluntary basis in advance of regulatory changes that will make the reporting of swine movements in Canada mandatory. To accommodate swine traceability, the Canadian Food Inspection Agency is revising Canada’s Health of Animals Regulation to, for the first time, require the reporting of all movements of pigs.
A draft regulation, published this past summer in Canada Gazette One, is being revised in response to stakeholder comments prior to publication in Canada Gazette Two, when it will become law. Jeff Clark, the manager of PigTrace Canada an initiative of the Canadian Pork Council, expects a voluntary system to be in place before movement reporting becomes a requirement.
Clark acknowledges, the time frames for moving ahead on the regulatory changes are fully in the hands of the Canadian Food Inspection Agency but he expects a revised version of the amended Health of Animals Regulation to be republished in Canada Gazette Two sometime in 2013.
Source: Farmscape.ca