Sask Pork to Assist Producers During Proposed Updated Pig Code of Practice Public Comment Period

By Bruce Cochrane

The producer services manager with the Saskatchewan Pork Development Board says Sask Pork will provide support to its members as they review proposed changes to Canada's Pig Code of Practice.

The National Farm Animal Care Council is overseeing the revision of eight codes of practice for Canadian livestock producers.

A proposed updated Pig Code of Practice is scheduled to be released June 1 which will trigger a 60 day public comment period.

Harvey Wagner, the producer services manager with the Saskatchewan Pork Development Board, says the organization will be providing as much information to producers on the proposed changes as possible.

Harvey Wagner-Saskatchewan Pork Development Board:
Certainly we're looking forward to the release on June 1.

After that we're going to provide producers information on what the code is, send out some copies of information to producers and a letter explaining a bit what the process is and how it'll be working so they're fully aware of that.

Then we're going to have a couple producer meetings where we're going to have face to face discussion on the code and what it is, what it looks like and what the implications may be to individual producers, one in Swift Current on June 20 and one in Saskatoon on June 21.

After that we're going to get producers to review it and get to understand what it means to them.

Then we're going to encourage them to provide comments to the national Farm Animal Council on the code, on the sections that affect them and what could possibly be done to improve the code to make it better for the producers and for their animals because there's no point in having a code that's not particularly helpful to producers in their care for animals either.

Wagner says the codes of practice affect producers more than they affect anybody so it's important to make sure that what ever is in a code is reasonable for the care of the animals, for the well being of the animals and for the producers involved.

Source: Famrscape