U.S. pork industry's common audit now a reality for the nation's 59,000 swine producers
Sunday, June 7, 2015
It represents a massive overhaul of industry standards south of the border. What it does it imply for Canada as we revamp our quality improvement and animal care assessment programs here?
by MARY BAXTER
This year, as the U.S. pork industry rolls out its common swine industry audit, Dale Norton figures he's prepared – more or less.
On the "more" side are years of participation in the industry's Pork Quality Assurance Plus program. This includes site assessments and is intended to educate producers on best practices to ensure the well-being of animals, provide some benchmarks and obtain feedback on the approaches being used.
Norton, president of the National Pork Board, was also chair of the industry's animal welfare committee when it was developing the common audit. So it's not surprising that at his operation there already exists a written euthanasia plan, one of the new audit's requirements. And he is able to clearly itemize the ongoing training – another expectation of the audit – that's delivered to his seven employees.
But Norton is a smaller producer. The Bronson, Mich., farmer runs a 1,400-sow, breed-to-wean operation with his brother, nephew and son. He doesn't have an employee dedicated to training others or maintaining records to the level that the audit will require. "Those are areas that we're working on right now to try to make sure that we have the operating procedures in place to ensure we meet the needs of the audit."
This year, too, marks the beginning of blending new standards from Canada's new Code of Practice for the Care and Handling of Pigs into the country's national quality improvement programs. One key aspect will be a revamp of the Animal Care Assessment program (ACA).
"We need to be able to show our customers both here at home and around the world that we are producing pork in a responsible manner," says John de Bruyn, one of the members of the technical committee that will be working on revising the program. The revamped ACA will be "producers' assurance that pork is being produced in a manner that meets consumers expectations," he says.
These changes, however, are still in the planning process. South of the border, the common industry audit represents the culmination of a massive overhaul of industry standards and it's rapidly becoming a reality for the country's 59,000 pork producers.
So what might Canadian producers learn from their southern neighbours' experiences so far? That the road from development to implementation is long, for one.
Sherrie Webb, director of swine welfare at the National Pork Board, says the industry decided two years ago to adopt a common swine industry audit to address the rapidly growing number of third-party farm audits. Although the industry-wide Pork Quality Assessment-plus (PQA-plus) program employed a third-party verification, the program itself was the subject of the evaluation.
"The market chain was beginning to ask for more verification and validation specific to an individual farm and so we were starting to see an increase in the number of on-farm audits being done by third parties to try to provide that assurance," she explains.
The industry formed a task force to develop the common audit platform with representation from producers and packers as well as from the food service and retail sectors. By this time last year, they were beginning to test their working draft and the final version was introduced in October. The audit is now certified by the Professional Animal Auditor Certification Organization Inc., which will offer auditor training later this year.
Animal-based measures
The audit is based on the industry's existing PQA-plus program, as well as on audit programs developed by individual processors. It uses animal-based measures such as lameness or overall body scoring to assess biological, physiological and behavioural indicators of the animal itself to determine how it is being cared for. Other measures of animal welfare assessment are also employed either directly or through the terms of the PQA-plus program which the audit requires farms to be enrolled in. The other measures address management through the evaluation of documents important to procedures and animal care (such as feed, castration or euthanasia) and an assessment of the practical details of the animal's housing.
The audits only apply to the specific site reviewed and so the certification cannot be extended to an operation in another location. They are voluntary, but the expectation is that packers will require them as a condition of purchase.
Norton observes that the audits are based on continuous improvement. "You don't expect to score 100 per cent. You expect to improve in areas that are detected, that need improvement over time, and that's an important component of it."
Four months into the launch of the program, audits were only just beginning to be scheduled and there were still uncertainties. For instance, although packers paid for on-farm audits in the past, it's not yet known if they will pay for the shared audit. (One of the goals of creating a common audit has been to enable farms to share the results of an audit commissioned by one packer with another packer.)
Webb notes, as well, that packers have needed some time to complete the logistics of setting the new audit into place.
For his part, Dale Norton says he has accepted verification as a fact of doing business, but he expects there will be "pushback" from some producers who don't want auditors on their farm and are uncomfortable about such requirements as having to document when rooms are checked. He sympathizes with the discomfort. "As somebody who's there a lot, it just feels like that's an unnecessary thing. That's kind of a slap in the face to say did you actually feed your pigs today."
Paul Ayers, though, won't be taking offence. In fact, Ayers, animal care co-ordinator at The Maschhoffs Inc., Carlyle, Illinois, welcomes the audit.
The company is one of North America's largest family-owned pork production networks, and for the past couple of years it has experienced several third-party audits. "We have multiple packers or customers that we sell to," Ayers explains, noting that each would have slightly different compliance standards. Now, with a common audit in place and buy-in from packers who represent roughly 95 per cent of the country's pork processing volume, "we have more of one consistent standard to comply with."
Moreover, he expects it will actually ease their workload by reducing duplication in audits. With one standard, "we can share those results with different customers if needed," he explains.
They've already been using the new audit standards and assessment tool internally for the past six months. "We're working with a large number of farms," he notes, pointing out that the company works with roughly 450 partners and maintains several barns of its own. "There's a lot of education that needs to take place. We've made some pretty significant efforts over the last year or so to educate all of our caretakers on these standards."
Industry proactive
Dallas Hockman, vice-president of industry relations for the National Pork Producers Council, says that by adopting the common industry audit the industry demonstrates that it is being proactive. A unified audit process, he says, is much better than having several different types of audits. "There's two things that should not be used for competitive positions, and that's food safety and animal welfare," he says.
The approach is also a way to demonstrate to regulators that there is no need for additional laws or regulations. The openness in the development of the approach, he says, "lends itself to being much more defensible than some kind of fox guarding the henhouse approach." That there is buy-in to a formalized support at all levels of the industry "all goes together to tell a much better story and to help to defend against any potential action that's going."
It's also far more effective than individual swine-producing states coming up with their own solutions. But it won't be "the ultimate Star Wars curtain," Hockman warns. Efforts continue to take place to prescribe certain housing standards, such as eliminating the use of sow stalls.
"An audit is only one piece of the puzzle," he says. "You have to be able to demonstrate a total comprehensive approach to your Pork Quality Assurance program – that is, your hiring and screening of employees, your training of employees, your ongoing need for assessments and commitment to checking for continuous improvement and then, when necessary, yes, an audit. But they have to be all cohesive."
Here in Canada, it's too early to say if there needs to be a permanent third-party auditing process for monitoring animal care, says de Bruyn, an Oxford County farrow-to-finish producer and an Ontario Pork board member.
He notes that the common swine industry audit in the United States was developed to combat an increasing volume of individual programs that processors were operating.
"I think we're better off in Canada, we're more capable of creating a common standard that everybody can buy into," he says. "There's a blueprint for this country on how to proceed on both the issues of animal care as well as the Pig Code implementation and food safety. Whereas in the United States, there are processors that already have a program in place. My goal would be we get a program in place in this country that alleviates the possibility that everybody goes on their own little track."
Nevertheless, de Bruyn acknowledges there's a challenge ahead to achieve the right balance between ensuring consumers obtain the assurances they want that pork is being produced responsibly, efficiently and safely and not creating too much of a burden on producers to undergo validation of their activities.
"It's a reachable goal but we're probably better off to do it right than to do it quickly," he says.
The 12-member technical committee comprised of producers, provincial staff, veterinarians, government officials and animal welfare researchers is looking at how to revise the industry's Animal Care Assessment component of the Canadian Quality Assurance program to reflect the terms of the new national Code of Practice for the Care and Handling of Pigs published last year.
The assessment currently has voluntary body condition scoring, but the new version will incorporate more measures, says Catherine Scovil, associate executive director of the Canadian Pork Council. "What we've learned in the years since (when the ACA was launched in 2005), is really the importance of having some strong animal-based measures," she explains.
Those will likely include some form of body condition scoring as well as assessment of lameness and absence of injury. (Animal-based measures form one of three different ways animal care is evaluated. Management measures assess the documentation connected to procedures and care of animals, such as feeding, castration and euthanasia. Resource measures assess the animal's built environment.)
"We're aiming to have a document for pilot testing later this year with a release in 2016," Scovil says, noting the revision coincides with the revamping of the industry's food safety monitoring component with the goal of making the umbrella CQA program more objective, easier to implement for producers and easier to assess.
The council is also planning to introduce a third-party spot check this year that will be administered by provincial organizations. But only a sample of farms will be checked and, as Dean Gurney, Ontario Pork's divisional manager for industry and member services, points out, how the program is working is the subject of the assessment – "looking at the different questions as well as how the validator does their work, that sort of thing."
As these changes in how animal care is assessed become formalized, keep an eye on the end goal, advises de Bruyn. Canadian producers not only supply a large portion of the country's domestic market; in 2012 they also exported nearly 1.2 billion kilograms of pork. Assuring "everybody about the safety and welfare of those animals" is therefore key "so that we can maintain those markets," he says. BP
IMPACT training program to be ‘welfare central'
Documenting training in pig care and handling is an important component in the Canadian pork industry's CQA program and it is playing an even greater role in the newly updated U.S. Pork Quality Assurance program and related common swine industry audit.
But where in Canada can you find resources for formalized, practical, on-the-job training?
Last year, the federal and Ontario governments addressed this gap by announcing a joint investment of $2 million to support the development of training tools for all of those who work with livestock. In February, Farm and Food Care Ontario, the organization in charge of developing the resources, unveiled the IMPACT (Innovative Management and Practical Animal Care Training) program.
The program is about "knowledge transfer, new ideas and different approaches," said Mike Petrik, IMPACT's lead and a poultry veterinarian, during the February launch. "At the end of the two-year program, we're hoping to leave behind a whole bunch of resources that can continue to be used by the industries going forward."
Development began about nine months ago with an effort to identify activities and situations that hold the greatest potential for putting animal welfare at risk.
Program organizers consulted with researchers and academics from across Canada and North America as well as from Europe and Australia and talked to representatives from several different commodities as well as from those who provide services to the commodities. There were 57 surveys over nine livestock species, eight face-to-face meetings with commodity groups, group industry meetings and a cross-industry consultation.
Many identified similar issues, regardless of the animal species. The IMPACT team took the top three – euthanasia, handling and procedures – and is now developing sector-specific resources for these. There will be educational supports for poultry, dairy and beef cattle, veal calves, sheep, goats, rabbits and, of course, pigs.
Training will involve delivery methods ranging from traditional workshops, and educational campaigns delivered through media, as well as through a website (farmimpact.ca), blog entries and other social media using videos, interactive web-based learning tools and smart device apps.
For the swine industry, there are plans to develop online interactive instruction modules to help explain the new Code of Practice for the Care and Handling of Pigs. Interactive procedures and videos "from tooth to tail" will also be available as well as instruction on low-stress handling for pigs and swine euthanasia resources.
"Everything we do will support and be compliant with the Codes of Practice and laws and anything that's out there to control agriculture," said Petrik. "We want to be welfare central. If somebody has some kind of issue with animal welfare and are wondering how to do something, we want to be where you look first." BP