The Canadian Swine Health Board will host Canadian Swine Health Forum 2009 7 and 8 July in Saskatoon.

Industry stakeholders, researchers and government representatives will provide input for developing strategies for dealing with swine diseases and strengthening biosecurity on farms.

Claude Vielfaure, the executive vice-president of production and genetics with Hytek and a director on the Canadian Swine Health Board, says the forum will help identify challenges and what research should be funded to address those challenges.

Claude Vielfaure-Canadian Swine Health Board

This is a government led board that was created about a year and a half ago when the government announced that they would provide 76 million dollars to the hog industry to improve biosecurity, especially on circovirus vaccine.

Through this money the first stage was to help producers vaccinate their herds with circovirus and the second stage is to increase biosecurity across the pig industry in Canada.

There was a realization when circovirus hit the industry and how much money that cost the industry that there was things to be done to try and prevent and control diseases for the future and that's how this grant got established.

It's a big factor in everything we do and that's why we like to think we have high biosecurity standards on our farms and so we we're going to try and continue to do that going forward.

It's a huge factor for producers when disease hits a pig farm and pigs die.

It's a huge economic factor for us.

Mr Vielfaure says producers care for their animals and strive to keep them as comfortable and healthy as possible so when disease hits it's very demoralizing.