Pork Producer Input Being Used to Direct Creation of National Swine Health Strategy

The facilitator of a U.S. pork industry led effort to create a national swine health strategy says the level of producer involvement in the effort has been energising. 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 listening sessions with pork producers and an online survey to gather input for the creation of a National Swine Health Strategy.

Dr. Meredith Peterson, the Director of Swine Health with the National Pork Board who is facilitating the effort, says producers were asked to share their top swine health priorities and how they would like the industry to address them.

Quote-Dr. Meredith Peterson-National Pork Board:

All of the producer insights gathered this summer will be shared with the advisory group. We have an advisory group of producer leaders. They represent different geographies, different segments of the industry, different sizes of producers. They'll take a summary of that data and they'll use it to draft swine health priorities for the industry to focus on moving forward.

After that initial draft of priorities, those will be shared with both National Pork Board and NPPC Boards of Directors for their comments and feedback and then they'll be shared more broadly with the state associations to make sure that there's been a lot of visibility on these priorities before they're finalised so there's something that the whole industry can rally around, some key areas in swine health.I think I'm most excited about the level of producer input that this effort has had.

For me it's been really been energising to hear from producers what their top challenges are and how they expect or feel the industry could help address those challenges. I'm excited to focus my work in the next several years on what are those priorities that the producers are dealing with at the flat level and how can we at Pork Board do education and outreach and research that aligns with the producer priorities and hopefully make a difference for them on the farm.

Dr. Peterson says, ultimately, her end goal with Pork Board is provide the education, outreach and research that will help producers make the decisions that will result in healthier pigs on their farms.
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