The Chair of Manitoba Pork says improving biosecurity will be among the pork industry’s top priorities during 2017.
In May the Canadian Food Inspection Agency reinstated a regulation that requires swine transport trailers returning from U.S. farms to be washed in the United States before reentering Canada.
George Matheson, the Chair of Manitoba Pork, says biosecurity has always been important, a reduction of the transfer of any diseases amongst our herds, and PED in recent times has been a devastating disease, especially in the United States.
We did have a few cases in Manitoba this year but the specific farms either are negative or moving toward being negative so that’s good news for us. We continue to focus on prevention.
Something we’re looking at in cooperation with the federal government and CFIA would be a trusted trucker program where a transporter who has perhaps been certified through a course in biosecurity can have their trailer pass the border with a scrape-out and, because of their history of biosecurity, they can then move to the wash station at Blumenort where it would be thoroughly washed and baked to reduce all bacteria and virus.
It would be kind of like a NEXUS Program for those people going to the airport. If you have a history of being a good passenger, a good citizen, then you can bypass some of the restrictions placed when traveling.
~ George Matheson, Manitoba Pork
Matheson says such a program would allow these trailers to be scraped out in the U.S. and then thoroughly washed, disinfected and baked in Canada.
