The Division Director for the National Farm Animal Care Council says input from pork producers, pork sector stakeholders and the general public will play an important role in the update of Canada’s Pig Code of Practice

In mid-May the National Farm Animal Care Council officially launched the update of Canada’s Code of Practice for Care and Handing of Pigs and, as a first step, introduced a top-of-mind survey to gather stakeholder thoughts about pig welfare.

Jackie Wepruk, the Division Director for the National Farm Animal Care Council, explains the  input will provide members of the Pig Code Committee the information they’ll need as they begin their deliberations.

 “It’s important to hear the input from producers who are going to be expected to implement the code”

“The Pig Code Committee will consider the top-of-mind survey results at their first in person meeting which is likely to happen later, this fall.

“The results of that survey are currently being compiled because they just finished June 4th, is when it was closed.

“That’s one important opportunity for broad public input and that can be the general public but we are also looking for input from producers who are going to be impacted by the code as well.

“Then, after the code committee has deliberated on the code content, and this is usually a year and a half, sometimes two years down the road, and it feels that it has reached a reasonable consensus among itself, then the code is released for what we call a 60-day public comment period.

“At that point the whole code is released for public comment along with the Scientific Committee report and we are inviting comment on the specific content of the code to allow anyone to be part of that solution in terms of figuring out, how do we make this code the best code possible?

“We want to hear from a variety of voices at each of these opportunities.

“As I said already, it’s important to hear the input from producers who are going to be expected to implement the code.”

The public comment period on the proposed update is tentatively planned for late 2026 or early 2027 with a targeted March 2028 completion.

Progress can be tracked by visiting the National Farm Animal Care Council website at NFACC.ca