CSHB Initiatives Attract Interest of Producers of Other Livestock Species

By Bruce Cochrane

The executive director of the Canadian Swine Health Board reports initiatives aimed at protecting the Canadian swine herd from disease are attracting the interest of those involved in the production of other livestock species.

Since its formation in 2008, the Canadian Swine Health Board has overseen several initiatives aimed at protecting the Canadian swine herd from disease, including the delivery of a national biosecurity training program for swine producers and creation of a national swine disease surveillance system.

CSHB executive director Bob Harding suggests efforts to control disease in swine have implications for other species.

Bob Harding-Canadian Swine Health Board:
All of our different initiatives that we've undertaken, they're not that specific to the pig sector.

The details obviously are and if we talk about the specifics of disease, obviously those would be generally pig specific but if we think about processes that we've had to go through we think that there is a tremendous amount of opportunity to work closely with other species and are seeking to do that.

We work closely with the National Farmed Animal Health and Welfare Council who's challenge is to come up with approaches where we deal with things that do cut across all species.
They have a real interest in some of the work that we've been doing obviously as a model to work with others.

We're obviously the Swine Health Board so we're focused on swine.
That said we recognize that there are some opportunities for real win win situations.
If we think about our biosecurity it was the development itself and the training, the models of how we do it.

Obviously other industries are structured differently and so on but there are a lot of lessons learned that I think would be of interest from a monitoring perspective and diagnostics as well.

Harding says when we talk about disease prevention and control or surveillance and an ability to respond to a developing issue or emergency there's a real impact from one species to another.

Source: Farmscape