A total of 287 delegates were registered for the 40th annual Saskatchewan Pork Industry Symposium.

A group of 73 producers and 14 validators liked what they saw in a sneak peek at the new Canadian Pork Excellence program.

The score of seven out-of-10 put a smile on Canadian Pork Council executive director John Ross’ face. He can hardly wait for the second test drive.

“I thought that was extraordinary,” Ross told delegates at the Saskatchewan Pork Industry Symposium. “We built the program and got it about the 75 or 80 per cent level and said, ‘All right, let’s push this out on the farm and see what it looks like.’”

Canadian Pork Excellence brings together on-farm food safety, biosecurity, animal care and much more under one big umbrella.

Ross said it is one thing to sit at a computer or meet in a boardroom, but quite another to take a program out to farms.

“So, we ran it out and had piloted it on 73 farms across Canada in all the different sizes and configurations you can think of and we got all kinds of feedback.”

The on-farm evaluation took place between January and May of this year. The suggestions producers and validators made were taken to heart.

“We spent the most part of the summer trying to figure out how to get those added in to our program and reflect the comments we got back.

“We think we’re there. We’re in the process now of just cleaning up that binder and we are going to run it out to a peer review committee.”

Those fresh eyes will soon be looking at the revised binder.

“We’re going to give them the binder and say, ‘What do you think?’ Six weeks after they get the binder we’re going to get them into Ottawa and have a discussion. We will get their views and hopefully we will have met the expectations.”

The goal is to have a soft launch in the summer of 2018 and the formal launch in January 2019. It will take three years to roll out the program to producers across the country.

There are five reasons to update the program that was put into place in 1998, Ross said.

*To keep up with changing customer demands globally related to food safety and animal care;

*To ensure the 2014 Pig Code of Conduct requirements are reflected in the animal care program;

*To streamline the program delivery;

*To keep up with competitors including those in the United States;

*To maintain access to valuable existing markets that have continually increasing expectations and to potentially access new global markets.

“The first question is why would we talk about Canadian Pork Excellence?” Ross said. “What’s in it and who cares? Why bother?”

Ross answered his own questions for those in attendance.

“Canadians look to people to provide them with safe healthy nutritious food. One of the groups they look to are farmers and ranchers. Canadians are reaching out to us and saying, ‘We are looking for you guys to bring it forward and we want to see how you are doing it.’

“Really what we have to do is get back to this public trust. Canadians very much like Canadian Pork Excellence. We do all this stuff; we just need to tell people we are doing it.” He said a lot has changed since 1998.

“It was a great program . . . really well done. We need to keep up. Things have changed, demands have changed and there are increasing expectations.

“In 20 years we managed to learn a few things about streamlining program delivery. We needed an opportunity to take advantage of what we learned and get it into the way we deliver the program with the view to making it simpler.”

Canadian Pork Excellence is made up of three components: PigTrace, PigSafe and PigCare.

“When we set out to build these things, one of the strengths we have in our program is that it is controlled by producers and reflects the expertise we have in producers in this country.

“We started out, how do we make this more useful for producers? It should help you along. It needs to be transparent and it needs to be credible.

“We need to be able to get out and talk to Canadians. We need to get out and talk to politicians about the things we do on our farms and the transparent program we have.”

Ross said there is training involved for producers, but it’s not onerous.

“It won’t take forever. It is not like you have to go to town and take five days of training. It takes about an hour and a half to get through it. It’s an exercise to make sure we all know why we are doing the program and the importance of doing it properly.”

Ross had a chance to see the program at work first hand at a farm in Alberta. Ross tagged along with a validator that day.

“We could have done the validation and filled out the forms in 45 minutes. We were there for three hours. The program facilitated that discussion and served as an agenda. We worked through that … exactly like the program should work.”

He said validators are integral to the success of the program. “They play a really big role, but we are asking them to juggle two hats at the same time … we are asking them to be validators and come and evaluate your system and validate what is being done on the farm.

“And they are more often than not your herd vet. It does put them in a bit of a conflict of interest position and we’re aware of that. Folks out there would say you really should avoid that conflict of interest by bringing in a third party and being done with it.

“My personal view is this is one of the strengths of the program. You can sit down with your herd vet, work through this stuff and have a really sound, solid discussion about how to improve things on the farm.”

He said validators will be responsible for providing consistency across the country. “We want to make sure the program is being delivered the same in every province and not see variations between folks and between farms.” The manual is made up of chapters that cover virtually everything a producer needs. If it’s not there, it will be added.

“We changed around the producer manual, trying to make it a little simpler and a little more complete. I think we’ve done a pretty good job, although it’s a lot fatter than it used to be.” He said work will be ongoing.

“When we roll this thing out over the next few years, we are going to have 7,000 producers looking at it and I will guarantee among the 7,000, producers we’re going to find a whole bunch of ideas to improve the thing.

“We are putting system in place where we can harvest that information and get this updated a little more often so we can take advantage of that information.” •

— By Cam Hutchinson