An animal care specialist with Mark Fynn, reports the response of pork producers in Manitoba to the Canadian Swine Health Board’s national Biosecurity Training Program has been excellent.
The National Biosecurity Training Program, based on the Canadian Swine Health Board’s National Biosecurity Standard was, launched in the spring of 2011 in Manitoba, Ontario and Quebec and has since been rolled out across the rest of Canada.
The program is being coordinated nationally through the Canadian Swine Health Board and delivered by the provincial pork organizations and is open to registered pork producers certified under the Canadian Quality Assurance Program.
The training is intended to educate pork producers about biosecurity protocols on their farms and strategies for minimizing the risk of disease transmission and the introduction of foreign animal disease onto their farms and covers everything from live pig transport to deadstock handling, washing protocols and rodent control.
Mark Fynn, an animal care specialist with Manitoba Pork Council says the program got off to a swift start in Manitoba, over 460 sites in Manitoba have received training so far, out of those 460 sites on-farm veterinary assessments have been received for over 400 and the goal is to get that number of up to about 550.
We’ve been quite lucky in Manitoba to have Growing Forward provide us with some funding for different sites to have projects done to enhance biosecurity so we know we’re not moving backwards at least and, at the same time, when we’ve had those done we’re also doing follow-up visits on site to be able to benchmark what biosecurity practices looked like before and what they look like now.
That should give us a better indication of how biosecurity has improved.
As far as the occurrence of disease it’s hard to tell but we know that we’re improving practices out there.
Fynn encourages any producer interested in the program to contact Manitoba Pork Council, Manitoba Agriculture Food and Rural Initiatives or their local herd health veterinarian.
