The Canadian Swine Health Board was created in 2009 to coordinate efforts to improve the health of the Canadian swine herd and focuses on biosecurity, long term disease risk management and research.

Last month the organization approved a dozen or so new research projects to be conducted over the next three months to two years.

Board chair Florian Possberg says many of these projects will involve efforts to control Porcine Reproductive & Respiratory Syndrome.

Florian Possberg-Canadian Swine Health Board

One of our major focuses will be on the PRRS virus.

We know it causes probably the most severe economic losses to Canadian swine herds across the whole nation.

As well that fits in very well with initiatives they have going on in the United States to reduce and mitigate the issues around PRRS as well.

We can use that as really the test case for how well we put in place biosecurity measures.

We know that you can eliminate PRRS systematically in individual operations and if you have the correct biosecurity measures in place you can keep the places PRRS negative so quite a number of our projects are focusing on PRRS and how we can use that as not only improving the health of our Canadian herd but we know that if we can reduce and eliminate PRRS in our Canadian herd we can use the same principles to attack other diseases as well.

Mr Possberg says we have a unique opportunity to take a proactive approach to preventive medicine.

Further Reading

-

Find out more information on PRRS by clicking here.