Early this year the Canadian Swine Health Board began surveying pork producers across Canada to determine what biosecurity measures are currently being used to reduce the risk of disease and identify potential areas for improvement.

Board chair Florian Possberg says it's a broad based study involving about 300 producers across Canada.

Florian Possberg-Canadian Swine Health Board

We're trying to determine what our weaknesses are in terms of allowing disease onto our operations.

It's things like how diseases can enter our farms and that can be pretty broad based.

It can be through breeding stock, it can be through marketing trucks and traffic from feed companies, it can be people that go from unit to unit and carry disease.

We know there's quite a variation of biosecurity measures from smaller operation in areas where there is intense production and there's some key ones in Canada.

Southern Ontario, some areas of Quebec, they have different biosecurity issues than say western Canada where there's miles between operations and the operations tend to be larger.

We really need to understand that and then put together plans that help producers mitigate risks of disease coming onto their units by improving their biosecurity.

Mr Possberg says surveys are being conducted now and the results will be compiled into a final report.

He says information collected through the study will identify what needs to be done to implement a national standard for biosecurity.