Biosecurity Benchmarking Study to Be Launched

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Latest Pig Industry News

Friday, November 20, 2009

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Biosecurity Benchmarking Study to Be Launched

CANADA - The Canadian Swine Health Board plans to launch a national biosecurity benchmarking study in January, writes Bruce Cochrane.

Farm-Scape is sponsored by
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The Canadian Swine Health Board was formed in early 2009 to coordinate and oversee research initiatives aimed at reducing the risk of new and emerging animal diseases as well as existing disease.

Board chair Florian Possberg says, by understanding producers current biosecurity practices and identifying weaknesses, we can formulate changes that will improve biosecurity.

Florian Possberg-Canadian Swine Health Board

We have an opportunity to use biosecurity as an advantage for our producers by reducing introduction of new diseases or reducing or exterminating existing disease.

In order to do that we need to understand what our strengths and weakness are, what's really our vulnerabilities and to do that we need to go on farm and understand what producers are using for biosecurity.

Because the weakest link is our greatest susceptibility, we need to understand where that is so we're undertaking a benchmarking study to go across Canada to understand that.

Our proposal is to survey about 300 farms and other sources of biosecurity issues.

We will have coordinators to help make sure that these surveys are carried out at a very high level.

We hope to have that data collected fairly quickly and then we hope to have some of the results collated into something that hopefully will have a tangible report by the end of March.

Mr Possberg says reducing disease loads or prevent introduction of new disease will give producers a productive advantage and potentially improve market access.

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