By Bruce Cochrane
To help the province's pork producers prepare for the mandatory reporting of hog movements, set to take effect July 1, Sask Pork is hosting a series of PigTrace Canada town hall meetings.
Under amended regulations under Canada's Health of Animals Act, due to take effect July 1 to accommodate swine traceability, anyone shipping or receiving pigs will be required to report those movements to the PigTrace Canada database.
Over the next two weeks, starting tomorrow, the Saskatchewan Pork Development Board has scheduled a series of six PigTrace Town Hall Meetings including two dial in Telephone Webinar meetings.
Harvey Wagner, the manager of producer services with Sask Pork, says it's important for producers to understand what the regulations are, how the system works and what they have to do to provide information.
Harvey Wagner-Saskatchewan Pork Development Board:
These are a little different than some of the previous regulations.
In the past we just had to provide a manifest when we moved pigs off the farms in Saskatchewan so farms had to fill out a manifest.
That manifest didn't go anywhere.
It just was received and held in the file at the packing plants and at the farms.
Now that information on that manifest will have to be put into the system by the producer when they leave the farm.
They're going to generate an outgoing movement and when a packer or a renderer or another farm receiving live hogs, when they receive the hogs they'll have to generate an incoming manifest.
Any time a producer receives hogs from a breeding stock company or feeder pigs they're going to have to report it as well as the packer will.
It's a two way recording of movement so farms, renderers, processors will have to report that they've actually received live animals as well.
For more information or to register for any of the town hall meetings visit the Sask Pork web site at saskpork.com or call 306-244-7752.
Source: Farmscape