The Canadian Swine Health Board says the pork industry can learn a lot from an incident last week in which operations at a Canadian pork processing plant were temporarily suspended over fears of foot and mouth disease.
Last Monday inspectors with the Canadian Food Inspection Agency limited activities at a pork processing plant in Red Deer, Alberta after the discovery of an animal with symptoms similar to foot and mouth disease.
Movement of pigs into the plant was halted for approximately 48 hours until laboratory tests confirmed it was not foot and mouth and operations were allowed to resume.
Canadian Swine Health Board chair Florian Possberg says the incident can teach the industry a lot.
Number one we have a very good system within Canada to check for these sorts of things so number one the fact that one individual that caused concern did result in significant actions to mitigate any risk.
In fact, if it turned out to be positive, I think that’s important for our whole industry in Canada as well as our trading partners.
Number two how things unfold, we do need to make sure that the process is as swift and effective as possible.
We haven’t had an incident exactly like this for awhile so in a way it’s kind of an opportunity for us to review the policies that we have in place to see if we can do things better next time and there are initiatives out there to try and make that happen so we can use this kind of as a dry run to make our procedures are as effective as possible.
Possberg says thank goodness tests for foot and mouth were negative.
He notes there are places that are dealing with foot and mouth disease and it’s a nasty situation if you’re faced with a full blown outbreak.
Source: Farmscape.Ca
