CANADIAN Swine Health Board to launch national biosecurity benchmarking study

20.nov.09
Farmscape

The Canadian Swine Health Board plans to launch a national biosecurity
benchmarking study in January.
The Canadian Swine Health Board was formed in early 2009 to coordinate
and oversee research initiatives aimed at reducing the risk of new and
emerging animal diseases as well as existing disease.
Board chair Florian Possberg says, by understanding producers current
biosecurity practices and identifying weaknesses, we can formulate
changes that will improve biosecurity.
Clip-Florian Possberg-Canadian Swine Health Board:
We have an opportunity to use biosecurity as an advantage for our
producers by reducing introduction of new diseases or reducing or
exterminating existing disease.
In order to do that we need to understand what our strengths and
weakness are, what's really our vulnerabilities and to do that we need
to go on farm and understand what producers are using for biosecurity.
Because the weakest link is our greatest susceptibility, we need to
understand where that is so we're undertaking a benchmarking study to go
across Canada to understand that.
Our proposal is to survey about 300 farms and other sources of
biosecurity issues.
We will have coordinators to help make sure that these surveys are
carried out at a very high level.
We hope to have that data collected fairly quickly and then we hope to
have some of the results collated into something that hopefully will
have a tangible report by the end of March.
Possberg says reducing disease loads or prevent introduction of new
disease will give producers a productive advantage and potentially
improve market access.
For Farmscape.Ca, I'm Bruce Cochrane.
Farmscape is a presentation of Sask Pork and Manitoba Pork Council