The Veterinary Counsel with the Canadian Pork Council says keeping African Swine Fever out of North America requires a coordinated industry-wide effort among stakeholders in both Canada and the United States.
African Swine Fever was the focus of a telephone town hall last week hosted by Swine Health Ontario, the Ontario Pork Industry Council and Ontario Pork.
Dr. Egan Brockhoff, the Veterinary Counsel with the Canadian Pork Council, told participants we've seen significant movement of the virus throughout Europe and now significant movement throughout China.
Clip-Dr. Egan Brockhoff-Canadian Pork Council:
The CPC, as soon as the virus was discovered in China, we immediately ramped up industry advocacy with the government in getting information out about this virus.
We've been speaking at producer meetings all across the country and on town hall meetings like this, really spending a lot of time reaching out to our U.S. colleagues because this is a North American challenge.
We need to build a wall around not just Canada but all of North America so we've been working closely with the U.S. pork sector, with universities and other veterinary groups in the United States to ensure that we're in alignment and moving forward in similar directions and targeting those gaps that we've identified.
We've really also tried to focus our efforts on producer communication and industry communication.
You've all seen that we have an ASF section up on the CPC web site.
It's a good resource of materials and links to discussions on ASF.
We've been spending a lot of time on ASF awareness of course.
You've seen the emails and trying to get as much out on social media as we possibly can.
Source : farmscape