By Bruce Cochrane
The manager of PigTrace Canada anticipates the introduction of fines in early 2017 for non-compliance of regulations requiring the reporting of movements of pigs.
Since July, 2014 under Canada's Health of Animals Regulation both the shipper and receiver of swine have been required to report all swine movements to PigTrace Canada to accommodate Canada's livestock traceability initiative.
Jeff Clark, the manager of PigTrace Canada, an initiative of the Canadian Pork Council, says, because many of the registered premises are inactive and new premises are being registered weekly, its difficult to know the exact level of compliance but typically between 67 and 70 percent of those registered are reporting movements.
Jeff Clark-PigTrace Canada:
There's no fine structure yet for the regulation as it applies to pigs.
The federal regulation kind of put a delay on the time line where we expected an amendment to the regulation that oversees fines so that will be coming into effect sometime in 2017 we expect.
Right now the consequences of not participating in this program, first would be just an education if you're not aware of the program.
Second would be an official letter from a CFIA inspector.
Then, if you're a repeat offender, you would get a series of letters.
There is kind of a log book, if you are a repeat offender of non-compliance and then, when a fine structure does come in and you are non-complaint at that time again, there is a history that you're aware of the program, you've been told and you're still not complying so the likelihood of getting a fine at that time would be higher than if you had no history at all.
So the worst you can get right now is a letter and kind of a buildup of history of non-compliance.
Clark notes enforcement is ramping up and while it is still primarily educational, CFIA inspectors have been issuing letters of non-compliance.
Source: Farmscape