An animal care specialist with Manitoba pork says funding available under the Growing Assurance-Food Safety On-Farm program will help pork producers further enhance animal welfare on their farms. Applications for the Growing Assurance-Food Safety On-Farm program, developed under Growing Forward 2, are being accepted until November 21.
Mark Fynn, an animal care specialist with Manitoba Pork notes all Canadian Quality Assurance registered swine producers are eligible.
Mark Fynn-Manitoba Pork:
Hog farmers are continually trying to improve animal health and welfare on their farms by trying to adopt new practices and technologies that's supported by new science and knowledge. They've done this in a number of areas such as housing and herd management as exemplified by the commitments in the new code of practice. But there's also some less comfortable areas such as managing sick animals and euthanasia.
Under the animal welfare category of this program it allows farmers to go and purchase equipment that's supported by the science in providing a quick and humane death to animals and also in accessing funding to have their vet come out on their site and actually train them on the proper use of it to make sure that they're ensuring a quick and humane euthanasia every single time.
Euthanasia isn't really a task that any farmer enjoys but it's a necessary component of animal welfare and that's what that funding is really targeted at providing. The other thing as well that falls under the animal welfare stream is getting multi gas detectors to better manage the air quality in the barns for the sake of their animals. There's a number of gases that are perceptible by people and are more easily managed but some aren't and this initiative under animal welfare acts to detect these.
Fynn notes funding is also available to enhance biosecurity.
Source: Farmscape