A pilot implementation study designed to help fine tune a proposed environmental management system standard for Canadian hog operations has been completed and is now under review. The Canadian Pork Council (CPC) completed an initial study that analyzed the strengths and weaknesses associated with developing, adopting or adapting and environmental management system-based program. They developed a standard in draft form that outlines requirements in areas such as policy, planning, implementation, checking and corrective action. They should also identify their adverse environmental impacts and develop plans reduce and manage them to comply with the standard.
The pilot study has 12 hog operations attempting to implement the draft standard that was created. These operations had to determine what regulations they have to adhere to in operating their farms on a daily basis, identify the activities that occur within their operations that might have an adverse impact on the environment and put together a plan to mitigate those adverse effects. Third party auditors then went out to these operations to assess the standard’s affordability, operational feasibility, and auditability. The goal is to have the standard be as realistic and user-friendly as possible and to improve the standard before final release to the marketplace.
The benefits that could be realized from the environmental management system standards includes 1) the reduction of operator’s adverse impacts of the environment; 2) the improvement of operator’s efficiency through reduced resource use and waste generation; and 3) the improvement of the operator’s market access and competitiveness by promoting environmentally friendly products.