New Emergency Planning Tool Now Available

A new tool is now available to help pork producers create plans for dealing with unexpected or emergency situations. In collaboration with the National Pork Board, National Pork Producers Council and Swine Health Information Center, the American Association of Swine Veterinarians has released a new tool to assist farmers and veterinarians with developing crisis operating plans.

 

Swine Health Information Center Executive Director Dr. Paul Sundberg says the tool was developed in response to COVID-19 but can be used to prepare for any type of disruption.

 

 

You can think of it as anything that might disrupt your supply or disrupt your workers or others. Certainly we think of this COVID-19 situation as potentially disrupting supplies and operations but you might also consider fires, natural disasters, foreign animal disease outbreaks.

 

Anything that could disrupt normal operations on the farm is really where we tried to take this and focus this thing. It's been said that the best plans are poor if they aren't written down because everybody needs to have clear directions. This gives producers and their veterinarians and everybody involved the opportunity to sit down and go through a list of questions and a list of points to talk about.

 

Where do we get this from, how do we do without it, what happens if, what happens when? I think the real value of this is in the pre-panning and in the recording of the current thoughts. Now, those current thoughts very well may change over time so it would be prudent to set into place at least a yearly if not more often review of the plans that are put into place and that will help to make sure that everybody is on the same page.

Video: Evolution of Beef Cattle Farming

The Clear Conversations podcast took to the road for a special episode recorded in Nashville during CattleCon, bringing listeners straight into the heart of the cattle industry. Host Tracy Sellers welcomed rancher Steve Wooten of Beatty Canyon Ranch in Colorado for a wide-ranging discussion that blended family history and sustainability, particularly as it relates to the future of beef production.

Sustainability emerged as a central theme of the conversation, a word that Wooten acknowledges can mean very different things depending on who you ask. For him, sustainability starts with the soil. Healthy soil produces healthy grass, which supports efficient cattle capable of producing year after year with minimal external inputs. It’s an approach that equally considers vegetation, animal efficiency, and long-term profitability.

That philosophy aligned naturally with Wooten’s involvement in the U.S. Roundtable for Sustainable Beef, where he served as a representative for the Colorado Cattlemen’s Association. The roundtable brings together the entire beef supply chain—from producers to retailers—along with universities, NGOs, and allied industries. Its goal is not regulation, Wooten emphasized, but collaboration, shared learning, and continuous improvement.