New Organization Prepares to Assume Responsibility for Western Canadian Swine Health

By Bruce Cochrane

The newly formed Western Canadian Swine Health Alliance is preparing to assume a leadership role in the area of swine health in western Canada.

Representatives of the Western Canadian Swine Health Alliance, a newly formed organization created to assume some of the responsibilities in western Canada of the now defunct Canadian Swine Health Board, met earlier this month with western Canada's provincial chief veterinary officers and pork industry stakeholders to look at gaps in health monitoring in western Canada, discuss strategies and set priorities.

Alliance general manager Ben Woolley acknowledges, while plans have been in the works for the past two to three months, the alliance was only officially incorporated a couple of weeks ago.

Ben Woolley-Western Canadian Swine Health Alliance:
There's been a number of reasons that we've done it.
The main one on this particular one is to put a sort of a fence around western Canada if you like and try to keep the herd as healthy as possible in western Canada.

We got a lot of good things going for us here.
We have a very healthy herd, very little PED and things like that and we want to make sure that we keep it that way.
So we're going to put a board together by January 20 that's going to work on the areas that we've identified that need attention.
The board will consist of both the provincial boards and CVO's along with some other industry people and they will set about putting action plans and processes in place to make sure where there are gaps we get them covered and things like making sure that CSHIN gets up and running and is funded and all sorts of things like that.

Woolley says time frames for action will become more clear once the board has been set up on or before January 20.

He says, for more information, contact him directly or any of the provincial pork organizations in western Canada.

Source: Farmscape