A PRRS Area Regional Control Coordinator with the Canadian Association of Swine Veterinarians says Canada’s pork producers are recognizing the value of working together to help reduce the spread of disease within their industry.
The Canadian Association of Swine Veterinarians in partnership with the Canadian Swine Health Board is coordinating 10 area regional control and elimination or ARC and E projects across Canada.
Dr. Leigh Rosengren, one of two PRRS Area Regional Control Coordinators, says these projects have done an excellent job of building awareness, producers have gained a strong understanding of the biology of the virus, the ways their herd can become infected and how to minimize that risk.
At the most basic level participants agree to share their PRRS status with their neighbors.
That means that they’re placed on a map and their PRRS status is identified by color and they agree to inform their neighbors and the other participants in the project if their status should change, particularly if they should go from a negative status to a positive status.
Many participants choose to go beyond this basic level of involvement and get involved by upgrading their biosecurity, by communicating with each other where they’re moving pigs and trying to minimize each others risk and really trying to control the way the virus is moving around the region with the pigs.
I think it’s been amazing, the change that we’ve seen amongst producers.
A few years ago you simply didn’t tell people your status because it could only come to harm your business and people are recognizing today that, by sharing status and working together we can really all make more money in this industry.
Dr. Rosengren notes we have evidence in many of our regions that the prevalence of the PRRS virus has been brought down, meaning they have more negative sites now than when the projects started.
