By Kim Flannery, MetaFarms

Last June, we provided pork producers with information on how to maintain the detailed records required for California Prop 12 pork compliance. Here we are, the first week of January 2024, and the deadline is here. Any producers selling pork intended for distribution in California are now required to have a valid Certificate of Compliance. Let’s review the areas in which you will need to log and label your compliant animal movements.

Compliant inventory management

There are three main areas of inventory management to address in record keeping, breeding animal (sow), wean pigs and feeder pigs, and market hogs. Throughout this entire supply chain transaction, traceability in the form of data will be required, this is the audit trail.

Maintaining an audit trail will give you the ability to provide breeding pig location events, as well as trace compliant wean pig flow to nursery and finish barns, and finally, label market hog shipments you provide to the Prop 12 Registered Pork Distributor. These records are required to be maintained for two years from the date of creation and be made accessible for inspection and audit by the department and/or an accredited certifying agent.

Documenting sow location movements

There are two allowable breeding pig space exceptions found in 1324.1. Confinement Standards Exceptions:

(f) To a breeding pig during the five-day period prior to the breeding pig’s expected date of giving birth, and any day that the breeding pig is nursing piglets.

(g) During temporary periods for animal husbandry purposes for no more than six hours in any 24-hour period, and no more than 24 hours total in any 30-day period.

Record the location and movement of sows during the allowable time in the farrowing crate or when confined during any temporary period. If your farm is not already capturing sow location information on farrowing event, now is a good time to begin that practice.

Inventory management: Wean and feeder pig sales and transfers

Traceability into Prop 12 compliant wean and feeder pig movements and market hog sales can be accomplished by the use of event codes in animal movements. Inventory management reports are available to provide a summary of compliant and non-compliant pig availability.

These movement event codes are available to provide a secure way to trace your compliant animals from weaning through harvest. If you are a producer that is participating in AgView, this event code information is synchronized there, helping you keep your animals moving in the event of a foreign animal disease outbreak.

Market hog loads in compliance or non-compliance

Packers segregate compliant pork, by asking that bill of lading documents be clearly marked with either “Pork CA Prop 12 Compliant”, or “non-Compliant.”

Pig groups: Market Contract Type

The ultimate goal within your current pork production software should be to find a way to mark groups of pigs as “Pork CA Prop 12 Compliant” or “non-Compliant” if that is the case. MetaFarms has a unique field for Market Contract Type allowing groups or subgroups of pigs to be labeled per market contract.

Our inventory management reports will help you with planning production of Pork CA Prop 12 Compliant marketable pigs by Market Contract Type, which is found on the Active Group Summary, Closeout Summary and Market Sales Summary Reports in MetaFarms.

The picture below shows the MetaFarms group labels Market Contract Type as assigned to a Prop 12 compliant group of animals.

If you would like to discuss how detailed record keeping and maintaining an accurate audit trail can support your investment in Prop 12 compliance, or if you have suggestions on production areas to be included in future articles, please e-mail or call us. We enjoy being a part of the National Hog Farmer Weekly Preview team. Previous Production Preview columns can be found at National Hog Farmer.

If you have questions or comments about these columns, or if you have a specific performance measurement that you would like us to write about, please contact: Kim Flannery via email.