As part of its inaugural meeting last month the Western Canadian Swine Health Alliance, a coalition of western Canada's pork processors, identified gaps in the monitoring of swine health in western Canada and developed a series of action plans to address those gaps.

Alliance general manager Ben Woolley says a board will be assembled by January 20 that's going to work on the areas identified that need attention.

Ben Woolley-Western Canadian Swine Health Alliance:

One of the key areas is CSHIN, which is the health monitoring database, which Chris Byra is heading up, Dr Chris Byra from B.C. is heading up, and that principally needs funding because it needs a new app, and it needs people to get on board with putting their information in, so that the information can be pulled out.

We've figured out, at least on a preliminary analysis of where the funding is going to come from and so we've got some ideas on that.

We've got to work with CFIA on trucking regulations for trucks going to and from the US.

We've got to figure out how we're going to monitor truck washes and how we're going to, if you like, register truck washes or make sure that they comply with safe washing protocols.

There's some work to be done on imported feedstuffs especially from the far east where there is a possibility of contamination for feedstuffs and things like that.

Those are things that we've got to work on so there's plenty of work out there that needs attention.

Mr Woolley says we have a very healthy herd in western Canada with very little PED and we want to make sure we keep it that way.

He says time frames for action will become more clear once the board has been set up on or before January 20.