A new national veterinary network is harnessing modern communication technology to allow swine veterinarians across Canada to work collectively to reduce the risk of transmitting swine diseases.
The Canadian Swine Health Intelligence Network is a national communications network created by the Canadian Swine Health Board and supported by data collected from swine practices across Canada, which allows veterinarians to share information on disease issues developing in their regions with their peers.
Dr. Dan Hurnik, the chair of the Canadian Swine Health Board’s Long Term Disease Risk Management Committee and a member of the faculty of the Atlantic Veterinary College at the University of Prince Edward Island, explains veterinary networks have been established in Western Canada, Ontario, the Maritimes and Quebec.
The primary activities we designed to have veterinarians talk amongst themselves and find what ever future trends are happening.
So there’s a veterinary network within each region that discusses on a regular basis, what are new diseases, what are trends happening, what are the problems being identified in those regions.
Once the regional meetings are held that information is then looked at at a national veterinary network.
Then the same issues and the comparisons between the regions are being made in a national context and see how that interacts and could potentially play a role in both the national and international marketing of Canadian pork.
The one point to add is all this information that we’re talking about, it would be absolutely without any farm identifiers so it would a composite of what a practice is seeing and it would not flow up with anything that would identify a specific farm.
Dr. Hurnik is confident, by having a network where regions discuss issues and compare notes, we can speed up the response to any disease issues and minimize potential losses.
