Farmscape for December 13, 2016

The Saskatchewan Pork Development Board says the Canadian pork industry's revamped on farm food safety program will provide customers the specific assurances they want.
Five Saskatchewan farms will participate in the pilot test, due to begin in January, of the Canadian Pork Council's revamped on farm food safety and animal care assurance programs, Canadian Pork Excellence.
Harvey Wagner, the Manager of Producer Services with the Saskatchewan Pork Development Board, says several programs are being combined.

Clip-Harvey Wagner-Saskatchewan Pork Development Board:
All our programs are going to be rolled together under the umbrella of Canadian Pork Excellence.
We have the PigSafe program which is the food safety component of it.
Then there's the PigCare program which is the animal welfare program which is roughly equivalent to the old ACA.
Then there's the PigTrace program which is the traceability program.
We're incorporating the requirements of the new Code of Practice more fully into the program.
It was important to do that.
There was some adjustments to the CQA program but it's difficult to make all the adjustments so the Code of Practice is being incorporated into the CPE program under the PigCare side of it and also some adjustments to the PigSafe side, so it's the three pillars.
Then there'll be some other additional pillars as we move along.
Biosecurity will be part of it and then we'll have some add-ons like, the Canadian Ractopamine-Free Certification Program, other things like Trichinella-Free for certain markets, group sow housing certification so that we have an opportunity to provide the customers the certification that they want.

Wagner says general implementation of Canadian Pork Excellence will begin around January 2018 and by January 2021, all of the farms will be on the new program.
For Farmscape.Ca, I'm Bruce Cochrane.

       *Farmscape is a presentation of Sask Pork and Manitoba Pork