The Canadian Swine Health Board reports pork producer participation in the National Biosecurity Training Program has exceeded expectations.
The National Biosecurity Training Program, based on the National Farm Level Biosecurity Standard developed by the Canadian Swine Health Board, provides training to help pork producers reduce the risk of disease infecting their herds.
The program was launched in mid-2011 in three provinces and has since been expanded to include all pork producing provinces.
Canadian Swine Health Board Biosecurity Advisory Committee Chair Bill Ballantyne reports the response has been excellent.
The swine health board originally targeted or hoped for a 75 percent pick-up by producers.
We’re nearing the end of the time of the program and we’ve reached that 75 percent in, I think, all provinces now.
We’re in many provinces expecting more than a 90 percent pick-up of the program and so we’re quite quite pleased.
The significance of the program I think is that the program involves producers or site managers and their veterinarians or a veterinarian of their choosing that’s familiar with the site being involved together in assessing what are the primary biosecurity issues at a particular site and then talking about cost efficient ways of resolving the priority risks.
Ballantyne notes animal health costs are on average the second major production cost following feed costs.
He says sites with reduced animal health costs can function much more cost effectively so the major beneficiary is the individual pork producer but the other major beneficiary is the consumers of our products.
