The chair of the Canadian Swine Health Board is confident the newly created agency has a substantial role to play in the health of both the Canadian swine herd and the general public.
Canadian Swine Health Forum 2009, which concluded Wednesday in Saskatoon, brought together industry players, government people from across Canada and practicing veterinarians representing a broad spectrum of interests to discuss a range of animal health issues.
Canadian Swine Health Board Chair Florian Possberg says these are critical times in the industry so it’s important to take leadership in areas over which we have some control and put together a strategy that will allow our industry to be favored in the future.
Obviously our number one concern is the health of our Canadian swine herd so we will be looking at how we can identify emerging threats, we will be looking at more efficient ways to deal with those threats that come before us.
We’ll also look at some of the chronic things that are a drag on our industry that could really provide some long term public good.
I’m talking about things that we could possibly create a more healthy herd that, for example, would have even less dependency on drugs and medications.
We know there’s an incredible number of interfaces between public health, public good and industry providing food for that public and so we think we have a role to play there in the long term health not only of our industry but the general public.
Information gathered through the two day conference and workshop is now being compiled.
Possberg notes the board has an outline of where it wants to go and information gathered during the forum will be used to flesh that out to a greater degree.
Source: Farmscape.Ca
