The chair of the Canadian Swine Health Board says, despite the economic challenges, the health status of the Canadian swine herd gives the Canadian pork industry an edge in the global market place.
The Canadian Swine Health Board will host Canadian Swine Health Forum tomorrow and Wednesday in Saskatoon.
The forum is being held to help lay the ground work for developing a national strategy for dealing with emerging swine diseases, for identifying research priorities and for improving biosecurity on Canadian farms and will bring together pork industry stakeholders, practicing swine veterinarians, government representatives and producers to discuss disease issues.
Board chair Florian Possberg says we have significant resources in Canada for dealing with research, biosecurity and risk mitigation but we don’t always coordinate them as well as we should and this forum will provide an opportunity to do that.
Canada does have a very sophisticated system for food safety and I don’t think it’s any accident that CFIA, our monitoring agency, is able to find avian, beef and pork diseases that no one else can.
That’s just speaking to the level of efficiency that they have.
What we need to do though is to be more proactive with that information, we need to understand what our risks are and most of all we need to coordinate all levels of the industry from government to practicing veterinarians to producers to make sure that we get the best value for our industry that we possibly can.
Possberg says, even though our industry is suffering great pain and loss economically, we do know that if we can have an edge in the health of our herd and the health of our pigs it really does give us an edge in the future of the global industry.
Source: Farmscape.Ca
