Regional Cooperation Offers Opportunity to Eliminate Disease

Farmscape for January 9, 2012   (Episode 4046)

The Chair of the Canadian Swine Health Board says, by working together regionally, pork producers are creating the opportunity to eliminate costly viral diseases.

An approximately 295 thousand dollar investment announced last week by the federal government will allow the Ontario Swine Health Advisory Board to create small-scale pilot projects for controlling and eradicating viral disease in pork, particularly Porcine Reproductive and Respiratory Syndrome.

Canadian Swine Health Board Chair Florian Possberg says several diseases attack our swine industry but number one, by a long shot, is PRRS which costs Canadian pork producers about 130 million dollars per year.

Clip-Florian Possberg-Canadian Swine Health Board:
The purpose is really to have a high level of biosecurity which basically allows the ability for individual units to focus on reduction and mitigation of certain diseases, particularly PRRS.

The real positive thing here is that, if you can act regionally so a number of units in the same area can have the same focus, you really have the potential to eliminate the disease and because it’s not in your neighbors unit as well as your own you have a much higher possibility of keeping it out long term.

With high levels of biosecurity you do have opportunities to protect individual units but when you work cooperatively with your neighbors you really create the opportunity to eliminate the disease regionally and then of course your chances of reinfection are much reduced as well.

Possberg suggests eliminating PRRS would create a huge advantage in terms of production costs and the industry’s ability to access international markets.

For Farmscape.Ca, I’m Bruce Cochrane.

       * Farmscape is a presentation of Sask Pork and Manitoba Pork Council