To help improve biosecurity Manitoba Pork has posted on its website an On-Farm Disease Prevention document to assist pork producers in turning their yards into controlled access zones.

Mark Fynn, the Manager of Quality Assurance and Animal Care Programs, says the goal is to control who and what enters the yard so that, as much as possible, we know what we’re tracking into the yard.

The goal in the end is to make sure that we’re not bringing anything into the barn that could affect the pigs, like any diseases or pathogens that can get in the barn and have a negative impact on the pigs. We’re looking at people who are entering the yards or vehicles that are entering the yards and what we really want to do is keep those to a minimum and keep them down to the people that essentially need to be there.

We have things like feed deliveries and livestock trailers that are going to pick up pigs or deliver pigs that have to enter the yard and staff have to enter the yard but what we try and assess is do those vehicles need to enter the yard, how close do they need get to the barn? If those vehicles don’t need to enter the yard, do the people who are coming to the site need to enter the yard.

What we’re trying to do as much as possible is push things back and have producers ask the right questions and make sure that if a service is able to be provided off site it’s done there. If it’s not, then can it be provided outside of the controlled access zone? If that’s not possible either then can we make it as efficient as possible when it’s on the site? Can we keep vehicles cut of the yard but allow people in, those sorts of things.

It’s really pushing things back to minimize the amount of traffic that we see on the yard to lower the frequency of chance for us to drag a disease into the farm.

~ Mark Fynn, Manitoba Pork

Fynn says, if we can keep the traffic flow into the yard to a minimum, it’s one more step toward preventing diseases from getting into the barn.

For more information on turning your yard into a controlled access zone, visit manitobapork.com.