Financial concerns While producers support the food safety measure, they question who will pay extra costs
Pork traceability has been discussed for years, but is still at an early stage and needs federal funding to be ready for mandatory implementation next year, says an industry leader.
Jim Laws, executive director of the Canadian Meat Council, is also warning that while traceability systems can be implemented from the farm to the processing plant, it is impractical to expect traceability to apply to processed meat products in the retail store, no matter what consumers expect.
Laws and Jeff Clark, manager of PigTrace Canada at the Canadian Pork Council, appeared before the Senate agriculture committee April 18.
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Clark said the pork council has applied for funds from governments to complete the project. He said there were several years of delay before the project got back on track last year.
The new Growing Forward 2 policy framework implemented April 1 calls for mandatory traceability and offers federal-provincial funds to make it happen.
“We are still trying to leave the development stage behind us and get into implementation, so it is still a very immature program and we need assistance,” he told the Senate committee.
“We have traceability today, (but) it is just not very good. It is paper based, it is phone calls and going to farms. It is very labour intensive.”
Laws said the meat council’s federally regulated members support the ability to trace the origin of meat from the farm to the packing plant cooler.
However, it becomes impractical when meat is mixed to produce retail products, he added.
“We believe that it is not practical, necessary or financially feasible to regulate a system to track meat from a retail package all the way back to the animal or the farm of origin,” he said.
Meanwhile, hog industry representatives appearing before the Senate agriculture committee earlier suggested that while they support traceability as a food safety and marketing tool, they have concerns about the costs.
“The marketplace at the moment is not paying a premium for pigs that are on traceability programs,” Manitoba Pork general manager Andrew Dickson said.
“The thought among some people is this is just something you have to do. It is part of the normal cost of business.”
He said debate in the industry is about who will pay.
“Manitoba pig producers are not in any financial position at this moment in time to pay all the costs of a traceability system,” he said.
“I have to emphasize that. We have been losing significant amounts of money in the last year.”
Dickson said Canada is playing with fire by not having the funding to create a better disease control and tracking system for the hog industry.
”To be frank, I think we are dancing on the edge of the Grand Canyon on this matter,” he said.
“It amazes me to no end we have not had a major disease outbreak in this country.”
