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.
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.
There are two types of individuals certified through the TQA Program: A handler is an individual who receives TQA certification to move, handle and transport pigs. An advisor is an individual who is trained by the Pork Checkoff and who can offer certification training and administer exams to handlers.
