About 150 participants are expected Thursday and Friday in Niagara Falls to take part in the Canadian Swine Health Board's third Canadian Swine Health Forum.

Swine Health Board associate executive director Morgan Radford says the programme is designed to facilitate discussion and she hopes it will create a lot of excitement.

Morgan Radford-Canadian Swine Health Board

At last year's forum we had the launch of the National Swine Farm Level Biosecurity Standard.

This year we're actually going to be talking about the implementation, how it's being done, what it means for participants and what to expect a little bit further down the road.

We will be discussing at great length the biosecurity standard, the actual implementation of that.

We're also going to be talking about the National PRRS Control and Elimination Strategy.

That's an activity that's headed by the Canadian Association of Swine Veterinarians with a lot of involvement from the Swine Health Board.

We are going to be having the forum in the Niagara area where the first Canadian PRRS area of regional control and elimination project is taking place so we're hoping to get participants' perspectives as well and have an interactive panel discussion.

Typically about a third of our participants are producers, a third are practitioners and researchers and then a third would be government and wider industry.

We've got lots of opportunity for discussion within the sections.

We have opportunities for the floor to contribute to asking questions and being involved in the panel discussions.

As well we're hoping that we will get a lot of discussion and excitement over the different projects that are going on.

Mr Radford adds there will be updates and discussion on other Swine Health Board activities, including development of a commercially available mortality insurance product.

For more on the Canadian Swine Health Forum visit swinehealth.ca.