Source: Michael Fielding, MEATINGPLACE, 4/14/14

Canadian pork producers will receive education kits over the next several weeks to instruct them on the new requirements to report the transportation of pigs in Canada.

Under amended regulations under Canada's Health of Animals Act, due to take effect July 1, anyone transporting pigs will be required to report the movements to the PigTrace Canada database, Jeff Clark, manager of PigTrace Canada, said during Manitoba Pork's 2014 annual general meeting.

Producers have seven days to report information such as destination location, date/time of departure and arrival as well as the vehicle license plate to the PigTrace database. The information must be kept for five years. This involves all pig identification and movement information reported to PigTrace.

The Canadian Pork Council’s PigTrace Canada initiative offers what the organization claims is a world-class, live-animal traceability system that allows the tracking of hogs on a national basis in the event of a disease outbreak or an emergency food safety issue.

“We have a mobile application, we have a desktop application on the web, we have different programming instructions for programmers to link commercial herd management software with PigTrace, and we also have a toll free number,” Clark said, according to a report from Farmscape, a multi-media news and information content provider sponsored by Sask Pork and the Manitoba Pork Council.

The regulations bring national consistency in the pig sector by building on what is already in place in some provinces, such as Alberta’s Swine Traceability System.

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