Beware Canadian pork producers – Comply with the Canadian Ractopamine-Free Pork Certification Program because of much more closely monitoring in the future.

The Canadian pork industry drives the Canadian Ractopamine-Free Pork Certification Program to assure international customers their pork is free of Ractopamine.

Dr. Egan Brockhoff, a swine veterinarian in Alberta says producers need to be aware of just how critical this program is to maintaining the Canadian pork industry’s access to global markets.

“We received word from China that they are going to be pushing harder on how they are auditing and supervising these programs,” says Dr. Brockhoff. “Previously when countries have violated it, they ended up losing market access to China for a year. It’s my understanding that potential number could be much longer this time so it’s critical that we take this as serious as anything we’ve ever done.”

His concern is to help producers do everything to ensure they don’t go through a major deviation. A minor deviation is a fairly straight forward corrective action and can be dealt with very simple.

“If you don’t have a letter of guarantee, that’s a minor deviation. If your feed invoices don’t say this diet was Ractopamine-free, that’s a minor deviation,” said Brockhoff. “If Ractopamine arrives on your farm, that’s a major deviation. If you have a farrow to finish farm and Ractopamine arrives at your site and gets fed to the grower pigs, unfortunately every pig in that barn goes off the Ractopamine-free certification program.”

Canada’s international trading partners look at the program and say, if there was Ractopamine introduced to the barn then the whole barn is taken off the program.

Dr. Brockhoff says Ractopamine-free access adds $300 to $500 million per year to the volume of Canadian pork sold and is a critical component for pork industry.

Ractopamine, a feed additive that promotes lean growth, is recognized as safe by the World Health Organization and the Agriculture Organization of the United Nations and, with some notable exceptions, is accepted around the world. Dr. Brockhoff says most importantly China, the European Union and Russia are Ractopamine-free zones. They won’t import pork products from animals that have been fed Ractopamine.

“Those markets, especially the Chinese market, are critical markets for our pork industry here in Canada,” he added. •

— By Harry Siemens