Get Ready to Report Pig Movement Coming and Going Across Canada

With an increase in profits for some hog producers in Canada, at least an increase in prices, it might be a little easier to encourage hog producers to get into the use of mandatory tools. So far it seems the uptake isn't great, but that of course can change.
Jeff Clark, the manager of PigTrace Canada says the promotion will start in earnest early in the new year for the use of new tools designed to accommodate the mandatory reporting of pig movements in Canada.
It's expected to accommodate swine traceability, the federal government will formally publish regulatory amendments to the Health of Animals Regulation this fall with the expectation July 1, 2014 being the official date where movement reporting will become mandatory.
Clark says the movement information will include the source or destination of the load of animals, the license plate number of the truck, the date and time when animals are loaded, the number of animals and any official animal identification numbers on them.
He says the movement reporting tools are all complete and ready to go.
"We will be issuing all of our producers and pork value chain people such as abattoirs and assembly yards their own login accounts and passwords so they can log into the system," said Clark. "I can set producers up today with their accounts, but nationally I'm targeting January 2014 as the day where we will really start to push the program.
We want to give the industry a lot of time ahead of the regulation to learn how to do the program."
He has some information and education kits ready to go out to the industry, including instructions on how to use the different movement reporting tools and expects to send them out in January and then start to proactively encourage the industry to start reporting movements to PigTrace.
Clark says once movement reporting becomes mandatory, the industry will need to report movement information within seven days, but the goal is to get it as close to real time as possible. The quicker the industry reports the information the more helpful it will be when responding to foreign animal disease issues or food safety issues.
The program will require the reporting of movement information when the industry ships and receives animals.
Two of the tools are web based so they're available now through the PigTrace web site either on a computer or any kind of smartphone.
"If you go to pigtrace.ca you can log in to the database from there," says Clark. "The third type of movement reporting tool that we have is intended to work with software companies that have herd management software in the barns."
He says there is an instruction manual for their programmers to modify their software so that it can submit information to PigTrace directly from the software. That way producers aren't having to enter the same information twice, once in their own barn and then again into PigTrace. •
— By Harry Siemens