By Bruce Cochrane
The national animal health coordinator with Canadian Pork Council says a new cell phone app that makes it easier for veterinarians to report on swine health in their regions brings western Canada to the front of the pack in terms of swine health surveillance.
Swine veterinarians in western Canada are now beta testing a new cell phone app developed as part of Canada's swine health surveillance system.
Dr. Egan Brockhoff, the national animal health coordinator with Canadian Pork Council, explains the app is designed in a way that, after a farm call or a phone call, it takes about 30 seconds to 1 minute for a swine veterinarian to input health information.
Dr. Egan Brockhoff-Canadian Pork Council:
This app really brings us up to the front of the pack with respect to monitoring for diseases.
The information is really going to put us in a position where we understand what is happening with disease on a daily basis in western Canada.
Are there new things that we should be looking at, are there old things that are changing, really provide real time information on the health of western Canadian swine.
In doing that we're really building a wall around the health of our pigs and that's really the goal here, is to protect the health of the pigs and to identify new and emerging concerns early on.
Of course not that many years ago we had Porcine Circovirus come into western Canada and come across the world and then recently of course we've had PED virus and the many different strains of that coronavirus and so we're constantly being bombarded with new diseases, evolving diseases and emerging diseases and we really want to prepare the industry as best we can to prevent the spread and to prevent the potential damage that these diseases could incur.
Dr. Brockhoff says this app is one part of many parts of being proactive, actively protecting the health and sustainability of our western pork industry.
Source: Farmscape