Food security, biosecurity, and food health are always important, even more so when a country relies heavily on exports.  
The Canadian pork industry exported just under 70 per cent of its pork production, netting 1.488 million metric tons of exports in 2021 valued at about $5.09 billion.
This means that Canadian pork production relies on export markets managed with great care. Canadian pork has a good name abroad; China takes one-third of Canadian pork exports, Japan 18 per cent and the United States of America 25 per cent. 
The impact of a broken needle would significantly endanger food safety and a needle fragment would devastate lower export markets.
 The US company Neogen working in food and animal safety knows the risks of broken injection needles. Listening to meat exporters, processors, veterinarians and producers, Neogen has developed a new injection needle that is difficult to break and visually detectable. An added bonus is that they won’t move into the muscle if it should break. 
“If it breaks it will remain on top of the animal’s, making it easily seen and extracted by the technician or veterinarian who did the injection,” said Arian de Bekker, Neogen’s animal protein account manager in Canada. 

The new D3X needle is a variant of the D3 injection needle used worldwide in livestock farming, with D3 representing detectable, durable, and dependable. The D3X needle is expected to be available in early fall, providing the industry with enhanced food safety security.
Greg Hastings senior director of business development at Neogen said that 22 years back a major US pork processor approached Neogen about an issue with broken needles in the plant. 
“With the lack of detectable needles, the industry was searching for a solution to address the dangers and implications of a metal fragments showing up on a consumer’s plate.”
The result was the original D3, a thick-walled needle designed to be highly detectable at the processing plant – the final step before the meat appears on the consumer’s plate.
Fast forward 20 years; The next level of needle detectability moves some of the responsibility from the processor down to the farm level.
“We wanted to make a needle that would be visually detectable on the farm regardless of equipment, training or experience,” said Hastings.
What makes this needle different and safer than the last one?
Studies as to why needles break, where they break, and how they break showed that it’s because of overuse. The continual bending and straightening of that needle will weaken it and cause it to break. 
“Vaccinating a pig is not the best job in the world. You’re doing hundreds if not thousands of pigs at a time. You’re getting into your rhythm. The last thing you want to do is slow down and chase a broken needle.”
After doing some computer analysis and modelling and replicating thousands injections, it was determined that most times the needle broke at the cannula/hub juncture.  
“And if you think about it, that makes sense because that’s the weakest point. ”
Instead of changing the breakpoint of the needle, the engineers added a highly visible extraction collar that extends beyond the breakpoint. It also has fingers (or prongs) on the extraction collar. If the cannula bends, breaks, or is compromised in any way, those fingers will flex out and give a visual indicator to the vaccinator.
“This means it’s time to change that needle. But under the worst case scenario, if the needle does break, the extraction collar prevents that broken cannula from going subcutaneous where the vaccinator can’t extract it.”
Hastings said Neogen is a food and animal safety company, committed to protecting the global food supply.
“We’re involved with controlling the vectors of disease transmission, and in the case of D3X, eliminating the impact of broken needles and the potential damage to the safety and credibility to the food chain. Neogen is also deeply involved in genetics and using genome identification to improve breed selection of the animal. They are committed to improve animal and food safety from the farm gate to the dinner plate. •
— By Harry Siemens