Animal Care Assessment Tool To Be Merged With Canadian Quality Assurance Program

July 25, 2005 — George Charbonneau

The Canadian Pork Council has released advance copies of it's new Animal Care Assessment Tool. The assessment tool has been developed in order to provide swine producers with a method of documenting their animal care procedures.The asessment tool was developed bv a working committee that included pork producers, producer organizations, animal care researchers and government representatives. The program was then reviewed and supported by the Canadian Federation of Humane Societies, The Canadian Meat Council, The Canadian Council of Grocery Distributors and the Canadian Veterinary Medical Association. The assessment tool is organized so that it can be audited by a third party. The Animal Care Assessment Tool was designed to incorporate into and use the same delivery mechanism as the Canadian Quality Assurance (CQA) program. The CQA program is the Canadian swine industry's national on farm food safety program. Dawn Lawrence is the National CQA Coordinator. Lawrence says "that over the next few months, officials will evaluate producer impressions of the package and identify any difficulties or problems that need to be addressed." "The animal care assessment tool will be made available in advance copy from July through to December and we'll begin doing some validations on the program in January. Through the fall we'll be providing some more information to producers and training our validators." Lawrence says that the hope is that both the food safety and animal care validations can take place at the same time in order to keep things as streamlined as possible for the producers.

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