We Care

Pork producers understand that providing a safe, wholesome food supply for consumers is a great responsibility. We believe that each and every one of us must demonstrate our commitment to ethical animal agriculture and respect for the communities in which we live. Accordingly, we all have an obligation to affirm our commitment to:
  • Produce safe food
  • Protect and promote animal well-being
  • Ensure practices to protect public health
  • Safeguard natural resources
  • Provide a safe work environment
  • Contribute to a better quality of life in our communities
For more information visit Pork Cares

Pork Quality Assurance Plus

Pork Quality Assurance® Plus (PQA Plus®) provides a framework for significant, relevant food safety standards and improved animal well-being. Pork producers pride themselves on the commitment to continuous improvement. PQA Plus is regularly revised to increase its effectiveness, incorporate new research information and ensure the program’s validity.
Maintaining its food safety tradition to ensure U.S. pork products continue to be recognized domestically and internationally as the highest quality and safest available, PQA Plus also provides information to ensure producers can measure, track and continuously improve animal well-being.

 

For more information click here

10 Good Production Practices

The PQA program’s 10 Good Production Practices serve as guidelines for safe and responsible use of animal health products and for continually and objectively evaluating and, when necessary, improving animal care.

  1. Establish and implement an efficient and effective herd health management plan.
  2. Use a veterinarian/client/patient relationship (VCPR) as the basis for medication decision-making.
  3. Use antibiotics responsibly.
  4. Identify and track all treated animals.
  5. Maintain medication and treatment record.
  6. Properly store, label, and account for all drug products and medicated feeds.
  7. Educate all animal caretakers on proper administration techniques, needle-use procedures, observance of withdrawal times, and methods to avoid marketing adulterated products for human food.
  8. Follow appropriate on-farm feed processing and commercial feed processor procedures.
  9. Develop, implement, and document an animal caretaker training program.
  10. Provide proper care to improve swine well-being.

 

Transport Quality Assurance

Transport Quality Assurance® (TQA®) is a program that helps swine transporters, producers and handlers understand how to handle, move and transport pigs and the potential impacts of those actions on pig well-being and/or pork quality. Anyone who handles or transports pigs, or sets protocols for handling pigs, is a potential influencer of animal well-being and pork quality.

For more information, click here