Revised Pig Code Offers Best Outcomes for Animals and Industry

By Bruce Cochrane

The Chair of the National Farm Animal Care Council's Pig Code Development Committee says Canada's updated Pig Code of Practice offers the best possible outcome for our animals and our industry.

Canada's revised Code of Practice for the Care and Handling of Pigs, released last week, contains new guidelines for housing gestating sows, new guidelines for pain relief during painful procedures and a greater emphasis on enrichment of the animal's environment.

Florian Possberg, the chair of the National Farm Animal Care Council's Pig Code Development Committee, notes the pig code generated more public interest than all of the other codes being updated combined.

Florian Possberg-Pig Code Development Committee:
There's some real contentious issues in our industry.
One is how we house our sows.

There are producers and veterinarians and scientists that say that the current stall system is perfectly acceptable and there's the other side of that story that says that it limits freedom and it's just not acceptable in today's way of caring for our animals.
That was a very tough bridge to get across but there was give and takes on all sides.

It was by consensus which meant everyone at the table had to agree on an item before we could move forward so it really added a lot of time to our process.

We did a lot of extra consulting with retailers and humane societies and producers and scientists and all kinds of groups and once we had all the information together we had a very good and capable committee that worked on this and we came to what we believe is the best outcome we could for our animals and our industry.

Source: Farmscape