The chair of the Canadian Swine Health Board says disease prevention offers the Canadian swine industry an opportunity to create a competitive advantage in the global market.
The Canadian Swine Health Board, formed in spring of 2008 to coordinate biosecurity research and develop long term disease risk management strategies, will host its second annual meeting Monday and Tuesday in Quebec City.
Board chair Florian Possberg says addressing swine health offers swine producers an opportunity to create a competitive advantage.
We’ve done some analysis of a disease called circovirus that showed up in our herds 10 years ago and onward and we think that that probably caused about three billion dollars worth of damage to our Canadian industry.
That’s very significant but when you look at other disease issues that have faced the livestock industry Canadian wide, whether it’s BSE or avian influenza. often these things are hundreds of millions and into the billions of dollars.
If we were to ever experience something like foot and mouth disease in Canada all of the expense we faced with BSE or circo or avian influenza would pale to the amount of dollars that we would be faced with as a livestock industry for dealing with something like foot and mouth disease.
So we’re talking about using prevention as a way of being proactive to lessen the chance of some of these real terrible diseases affecting our livestock industry.
Possberg says we’re at a point where the industry is profitable again and it’s important to make the best of opportunities to ensure the industry is competitive moving forward.
For further information on the Canadian Swine Health Board’s annual meeting visit swinehealth.ca.
Source: Farmscape.Ca
