CFIA adds teeth to pig traceability requirements

Monday, June 6, 2016

by SUSAN MANN

Pig farmers who don’t comply with federal regulations concerning animal identification and traceability may soon find themselves wrestling with fines of up to $15,000.

The Canadian Food Inspection Agency will be able to issue administrative monetary penalties later this year to pig farmers and others failing to comply with mandatory animal identification and traceability regulations that have been in place for two years.

Canadian Pork Council public relations manager Gary Stordy says it’s too soon to say if CFIA will issue “heavy-handed fines” once it can start using the monetary penalties for pork traceability violations. However, “at the end of the day we do expect producers to be using the program and comply with the rules.”

He says the idea behind the traceability and movement-reporting regulations is to enable the pork industry to trace a disease outbreak and “make sure the industry can recover quickly and effectively.”

Stordy adds the administrative monetary penalties are not new and are used for violations in other areas, such as animal transportation, and for processing companies and others that CFIA oversees.

The mandatory identification and movement reporting requirements for pigs came into effect on July 1, 2014 and for farmed wild boar on July 1, 2015, under the Health of Animals Act regulations. But the agency hasn’t been able to issue the monetary penalties because amendments to regulations under the Agriculture and Agri-Food Administrative Monetary Penalties Act haven’t been approved yet.

CFIA spokesperson Tammy Jarbeau says by email the amendments must be approved before the agency can issue the monetary penalties “in relation to traceability requirements for pork.”

The amendments are slated to be published in Canada Gazette, Part II, in the summer, she says.

Agency spokesperson Denis Schryburt says by email so far, CFIA officials have been have been handing out letters of non-compliance to pork farmers and pig custodians violating the traceability law.

He lists the following examples of non-compliance: a pig owner who didn’t identify the animals with approved tags or slap tattoos before sending them to an abattoir; another pig owner didn’t identify the animals with approved tags or slap tattoos before shipping them to an auction market or fair; and another farmer failed to report the departure pigs from his farm.

In 2014, CFIA issued 11 violation notices in Ontario related to animal identification and movement reporting requirements, and in 2015 nine notices were issued, according the CFIA website. There weren’t any numbers up for 2016 yet.

The agency verifies compliance with animal identification and movement reporting requirements at various locations, including farms, auctions, abattoirs, rendering plants, fairs and deadstock operations.

The monetary penalties are a “non-criminal administrative response to regulatory non-compliance,” according to an explanation on the CFIA website. They provide the agency with an added tool to handle situations where simple warnings aren’t adequate but prosecution “may be considered too harsh.”

The Agriculture and Agri-Food Administrative Monetary Penalties Act classifies violations as minor, serious or very serious. The Act sets out the penalty amounts, which vary from $500 to $15,000.

The Act also enables monetary penalties to be increased by up to 50 per cent for serious and very serious violations depending on the history and intent of the company or person committing the violation and the potential harm or harm it caused. Penalties can also be decreased by 50 per cent in minor violation cases.

For their part, the Canadian Pork Council, PigTrace Canada and provincial pork organizations have been “really trying to inform producers of their responsibilities under traceability” regulations, Stordy says. “That’s been part of the phased-in approach.” BF