Farmscape for December 9, 2016

Pilot testing of the new Canadian Pork Excellence program is set to begin early in the new year.
The Canadian Pork Council has revamped its on farm food safety and animal care assurance programs, rolling them into one, and is re-branding the program Canadian Pork Excellence.
Beginning in January volunteer farms across Canada will participate in a pilot test of the new program.
Harvey Wagner, the Manager of Producer Services with the Saskatchewan Pork Development Board, says participating farms will work through the program manual, keeping the required records and making necessary adjustments, then in the spring they'll go through a full validation and then both the farms and the validators will provide feedback suggesting changes.

Clip-Harvey Wagner-Saskatchewan Pork Development Board:
There's going to be five farms in Saskatchewan.
It's going to be a wide range of production.
We're having two farrow to finish operations, medium size but they're going to be different in that they're going to have different housing systems for their sows so there'll be a bit of a variation there.
We're going to have a larger farrow wean operation, a good size nursery operation and a wean to finish operation.
We're going to try to cover off some significant different operations in that.
Across Canada there's going to be about 75 farms, more in Ontario and Quebec obviously and a few more in Manitoba.
The idea there is to have a complete range of farms, whether it be farms that have bedded facilities, fully slatted facilities, loose housing stalls, small farms, large farms, any combination we can try and get to see how the program will work on various farms.

Wagner says general implementation of Canadian Pork Excellence will begin around January 2018 and will be phased in as farms complete their normal recertification so, by January 2021, all of the farms will be on the new program.
For Farmscape.Ca, I'm Bruce Cochrane.

       *Farmscape is a presentation of Sask Pork and Manitoba Pork