The Director of Swine Health with the National Pork Board reports over 800 pork sector stakeholders responded to an online survey designed to gather input for the development of a National Swine Health Strategy. As part of a coordinated industry-wide effort to improve the health of the U.S. swine herd the National Pork Board and the National Pork Producers Council conducted an online survey this summer to gather producer input for the creation of a National Swine Health Strategy.Dr. Meredith Peterson, the Director of Swine Health with the National Pork Board, says this input is critical.
Quote-Dr. Meredith Peterson-National Pork Board:
There's been a lot of data collection through the summer gathering producer insight.What we've been asking them is what are their top swine health priorities and how they would like the industry to work to address them? We've done that in a variety of ways.One way is through a survey.We had over 800 individual survey responses and then we've also held listening sessions.These are small group up to large groups sessions where we just hear from producers and others across the industry, industry stakeholders again as to what their top swine health challenges are and how they would like the industry to help work toward those challenges.We've held 47 listening sessions and then again had over 800 individual survey responses.
That information is critical.That producer input is really paramount to the success of this effort because that is what will inform what the National Swine Health Strategy is.The next step moving forward is to take that data and share it with our producer advisory group.That's an advisory group of producer leaders who will take all of that data from their piers that we gathered through the summer and they'll distill that down into some top swine health priorities for the industry to focus on.
So, the areas of priorities are to be determined but I think rest assured they are very focussed on what the producers have shared with us throughout the summer and what that advisory group will prioritise.
Dr. Peterson suggests it's important to understand this is a collaborative producer driven grassroots effort across the industry and it’s exciting to see producers putting such a focus on swine health.For more visit Farmscape.Ca.
Source : Farmscape.ca