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Tuesday, March 31, 2009
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Ottawa Commits Funding to Fight Swine Disease

CANADA - The federal government has unveiled phase two of national initiative to help pork producers combat disease and provide stability for Canada's swine sector, writes Bruce Cochrane.

Manitoba Pork Council


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In the fall of 2007 Ottawa unveiled plans for a multi-phase program to help hog producers deal with disease, particularly Porcine Circovirus Associated Diseases.

Phase one, which is nearing completion, included the creation of a program to assist in the identification and mitigation of PCVAD to help off-set some of the costs of diagnostic fees and vaccines.

Phase two was unveiled yesterday.

Parliamentary secretary for agriculture Pierre Lemieux says this initiative shows Canada takes animal health very seriously.

Pierre Lemieux-Government of Canada

We're talking about 76 million dollars rolled out in three phases. We've already delivered 25 million dollars which was a great help to our pork producers.

It basically halved the cost of administering the necessary vaccine to their pork herds.

Now that we're moving into phase two, we're announcing 40 million dollars over two years to basically develop and implement biosecurity best management practices.

That's a lot of words but what we want to do is basically study and understand better how the circovirus is showing up in these swine herds, what kind of things can be done to mitigate the spread, to mitigate the risk and what sorts of best practices can we implement and can pork producers implement to help prevent against the spreading of the circovirus.

It would be financially beneficial to pork producers if they did not have to vaccinate their herds at all.

So this is looking at ways to basically diminish the impact of the circovirus.

Lemieux says the Conservative government has a solid track record of listening to farmers and delivering real solutions and that's what's happening here.

Further Reading

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