The chair of the National Farm Animal Care Council's Pig Code Development Committee reports an updated Code of Practice for the care and handling of pigs in Canada has been agreed to and is now ready for final editing and translation.
The National Farm Animal Care Council's Pig Code Development Committee, made up of pork producers, practicing veterinarians, swine researchers and representatives of government and animal welfare organizations, met last week to finalize a updated Pig Code of Practice.
The draft updated code, which was released June 1 for a 60 public comment period attracted over 47 hundred responses from across Canada and around the world.
Pig Code Development Committee chair Florian Possberg says how we house pregnant sows grabbed the greatest public attention but the code also addresses factors such as space allowance for pigs, pain relief during painful procedures, activities to relieve boredom and how to deal with compromised animals.
Florian Possberg-Pig Code Development Committee:
We've got the pieces all put together.
Now we need to do some editing.
The final version needs to be approved by our committee members again to make sure that all the final details come together in the proper manner.
The document does need to be translated and, because it is a technical document, translation needs to be sure that it reflects not only the literal translation but the meaning of what was meant in the code as well.
That's quite an involved process.
We hope to have a lot of that done in the next couple of months and by late winter, early spring we do intend to have the final version ready for public release.
Possberg says the mandate of the committee was to come to consensus and, because it was a broad stakeholder group that put together this code, members believe it represents something we can be very proud of, from both a public and producer viewpoint.
