Sask Pork is encouraging Saskatchewan's pork producers to take advantage of a new program designed to improve biosecurity by providing real time on farm traceability. Sask Pork is partnering with Farm Health Guardian to offer Saskatchewan pork producers access to GPS software that will allow them to track the real time movement of people and equipment on and off their farms.
Sask Pork General Manager Mark Ferguson says, when it comes to pork production, one of Saskatchewan's greatest advantages is the high health status of its swine herds.
Quote-Mark Ferguson-Sask Pork:
All of our farms can have the option of using the software and technology. We'll be working to connect GPS systems on trailers in the province into this.
Basically, it provides a geofence for the farms that are connected and if a transport truck moves into one of those geofences that visit is recorded.For farms that are interested in participating, we're going to provide the software and the ability to log in.
Sask Pork is gong to be set up as a property group within the system and if farms want to log in and view their data, we'll set then up with that log in.
Individual producers, their participation is voluntary.They can choose to log in and participate if they would like to but we would certainly encourage every farm to do it because we think there's a lot of value. We've studied some of the diseases and one outbreak can cost hundreds of thousands of dollars on a farm.
So, the ability of any of our farms to prevent a disease from entering, it's very important from a cost perspective and from a production perspective as well.
Sone of these diseases can remove a lot of pigs from the herd and that's something that we want to prevent. Ferguson says Saskatchewan has a history of being a leader in terms of biosecurity and our farms are among the most high health status farms in the world and Sask Pork wants to keep it that way.For further information on this new service visit farmhealthguardian.com or saskpork.com.
Source : Farmscape.ca