The hog industry is well on its way down the traceability trail and will soon have a program in place in Alberta.
The project will be given a “soft launch,” with data collection and testing of the system starting Jan. 4, 2011, said Ron Axelson, a consultant hired by Alberta Pork. The project will be implemented in two phases and has been in the works for over a year and a half, Axelson told a recent Alberta Pork regional meeting.
“Once it has been implemented, it will be a smooth transition,” said Axelson. “There will be no duplication and you won’t even notice.”
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Alberta Pork is responsible for developing and implementing the system, which will later be linked with the Canadian Pork Council’s national tracing system, Pigtrace Canada, which is not running yet.
The program will run without any additional cost to the producer and will not affect the way they do business, said Axelson.
“Over the past year or year and a half, we’ve probably received over half a million dollars for the development of this system,” he said. “None of it had to come from the producers.”
Swine traceability is voluntary at present, but a traceability regulation in the Animal Health Act will likely make it mandatory by 2011, said Axelson. Movements of swine will be tracked using manifests which will provide information from producers, transporters, and receivers such as packers, processors or abattoirs.
“Producer and transport portions of the manifest have to be filled out before the truck actually leaves the farm,” he said.
Receivers then fill out the information and submit all the data to the depository.
Four manifests
Most of the producer information will be contained on a producer card which was to be mailed last month, said Axelson. Information required includes details such as the premise identification of the shipping farm, producer number, farm name, and a drug residue declaration.
There will be four different manifests that producers can use when shipping to slaughter in Alberta. Manifests will represent Sunterra, Maple Leaf, the Western Hog Exchange and a universal Alberta Pork manifest for abattoirs and Country Fresh Pork. The manifests complement existing movement documents already in use.
“We just made some modifications to these forms so they now contain the data we require,” he said.
Alberta Pork has also signed information-sharing forms with the government so that personal producer information will be protected. Livestock Inspection Services of Calgary has been contracted to act as the data service provider for the traceability project. The system has already been designed, completed and some initial testing has been done through a small pilot project.
The second phase of the project is full movement tracking, to be implemented in 2012, once the farm-to-slaughter phase is running smoothly, he said.
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“Onceithasbeenimplemented,itwillbeasmoothtransition.Therewillbenoduplicationandyouwon’tevennotice.”
RON AXELSON
ALBERTA PORK CONSULTANT
