The director of PigTRACE Canada would like to see better compliance among producers.
Jeff Clark talked about the swine traceability program.
"Compiling that information gives us a lot of intelligence to respond quickly to foreign animal disease outbreaks, food safety issues," he said. "We've compiled quite a bit of data today. I think we're a little over three million movements captured, so we're quickly turning into big data and as it relates to African swine fever, we're really starting to drive some value out of it preparations-wise."
Clark says they are planning on reaching out to producers to get more compliance. He notes Manitoba is at about 85 per cent.
"For this program to work, we really do need everything in there," he commented. "I'm not the enforcement arm, that's Canadian Food Inspection Agency, so I haven't taken that role of really proactively going after people. I would do it in a friendly way. We're going to start doing that."
Clark explained how the program is helping to prepare for diseases like African swine fever.
"We've done some simulations, even some have come as a surprise. Ontario Pork ran a simulation, and it totally caught me off guard, which is good, because in reality we wouldn't know when it would happen. It could be day or night, it could be weekends or holidays, whatever."
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