Manitoba Pork Council is circulating premise registration forms to the more than two thousand swine production units across the province. The Canadian swine industry, as part of its preparation for participation in a national multi-species livestock identification and traceability system, is collecting registration information from all farms that produce swine. In conjunction with the premise registration, swine farms will also receive new tattoo numbers.
Manitoba Pork Council emergency preparedness and technical affairs specialist Jeff Clark said the premises registration kit requests information such as the plot of land on which they farm using the legal land description on their certificate of title and, to clarify, a premise is the actual farm.
“We’re not so much interested in the actual producer but rather the plot of land, the barn, because that will be central to traceability, to tracking disease movement etceteras, production information such as types of animals, numbers of animals, manure storage, manure application and then contact information, both the barn owner and also barn workers,” said Clark. “In the event of an emergency authorities will have to get a hold of the owner but they’ll also need to get a hold of whoever it might be on farm and, in some cases, those might be different people.”
By using the premises, MPC will assign market tattoo numbers that will be specific to each premise. Clark notes the original goal was to have producers begin using their new tattoo numbers on May 1st but there have been requests to push that back to June 1st. The intent is to coordinate this so all hog farms in western Canada can switch to the new tattoo numbering system on the same day.