A Professor with the University of Saskatchewan says research that identified temperatures needed to kill swine disease causing pathogens continues to influence swine transportation biosecurity. The report, "From Research to Results: Measuring the Impact of Pork Research in Canada," released by the University of Saskatchewan and profiled as part of a YouTube webinar, looks at the value of national swine research funded through partnerships involving Swine Innovation Porc.
Dr. Stuart Smyth, a Professor in the Department of Agricultural and Resource Economics at the University of Saskatchewan and one of the authors of the report, says overall each dollar invested by pork producers in research yielded an eight to one return on investment while providing ongoing benefits to the pork sector.
Quote-Dr. Stuart Smyth-University of Saskatchewan:
One of the projects that was really quite informative was a project that was funded between 2018 and 2023 and this project looked at this issue of how to improve biosecurity by sterilizing livestock transportation trailers. There's a disease called Porcine Epidemic Diarrhea and there's no drug or cure for this.
It causes significant impacts within the swine production sector.It was identified that if trailers could be properly sterilized, that would be one way of significantly reducing the transmission of this disease between infected pigs and healthy pigs during the transportation process.
This was led by the University of Saskatchewan and what they did is through some trial and error, they found the temperature, they found how long the temperature had to be applied to a trailer to achieve the sterility of the implement.And so, it turned out to have a significant long-term benefit well beyond the end of the project that now trailers are sterilized according to the protocols that were developed and the incidence of this disease has begun to decline.
Dr. Smyth says heat sterilization has become ingrained within the Canadian swine transport sector with operators building dedicated wash facilities designed to accommodate the baking of transport trailers.To access the webinar search YouTube for "From Research to Results: Measuring the Impact of Pork Research in Canada."For more visit Farmscape.Ca.
Source : Farmscape.ca