By Bruce Cochrane.
The Manager of PigTrace Canada says the introduction of fines to Canada's mandatory swine movement reporting regulation is a important step in making the program credible.
Shippers and receivers of pigs in Canada have been required to report movements of those animals to the PigTrace Canada database within 7 days since July, 2014 and the Canadian Food inspection Agency has now introduced a fine structure for non-compliance.
Jeff Clark, the Manager of PigTrace Canada, an imitative of the Canadian Pork Council, says levels of compliance have variable.
Jeff Clark-Canadian Pork Council:
Anyone that's in possession of a pig is responsible for reporting the movement.
That could be anywhere from one pig on a hobby farm up to 2,000 pigs at a feeder barn.
The types of movements that need to be reported are essentially all movements, whether it's farm to farm, farm to auction, fair, assembly yard or slaughter.
The key information, the most important piece of information is the locations involved.
Second to that would be the date and time of loading and unloading.
Vehicle license plates is really useful information and any animal identifiers on the pigs, whether they're ear tags or slap tattoos.
Regionally, in the west we typically have large three site production.
It makes the information flow a little bit easier to report.
In the east, especially Ontario Quebec, quite complex systems and loops, makes it a little bit more difficult to tease that information out but, case by case, I'm working with people to make it as easy as possible.
In terms of compliance, certainly the movements to slaughter are generally the easiest to report.
Farm to farm movements are a little bit more challenging sometimes.
It's really just a matter of getting the information out there and working with people to make it as easy as possible.
Clark says, while fines will only be used as a last resort, this is an important step to give some credibility to the system.
He notes some producers have asked, "why should I be doing this if my neighbor is not and there's no penalty for my neighbor?"
Source: Farmscape