WCVM Research to Develop Tools and Techniques to Reduce Swine Mortality

Research to be conducted by foreign trained swine veterinarians working through the Western College of Veterinary Medicine to qualify for veterinary certification in Canada, will focus on reducing swine mortality from birth to market.As part of their SMART swine residency certification program training, foreign-trained swine veterinarians working toward veterinary certification in Canada will be undertaking a series of research projects focused on reducing swine mortality from birth to slaughter.

Dr. John Harding, a professor of swine medicine with the Western College of Veterinary Medicine, says research is a requirement of the SMART program and this specific series of projects aims to develop knowledge, standards and tools to improve swine health and well being and reduce mortality.

Quote-Dr. John Harding-Western College of Veterinary Medicine:

Individual projects are designed to evaluate swine critical control points which are, what are the activities we need to do in a barn that are going to improve swine health and reduce mortality?Secondly, dealing with evaluating internal biosecurity practices and compliance.We know there’s a long list of internal biosecurity things we should do on farms.

Whether they get done or get done well or get done routinely, we don't really know so this project is designed to evaluate what is most important in terms of internal biosecurity and what are the bottlenecks to full compliance.The third and fourth projects are related to treatment and really are designed to help monitor treatment rates and make sure that our treatment rates are very effective and we'll do that both on an historic basis as well as a real time basis.
The last project is related to developing and evaluating a standardised tele-necropsy protocol.

Necropsies or post mortem exams are done by vets on the farm and sometimes by technicians on the farm but the new way of doing necropsies, to deal with the long distances and busy schedules, are to have trained technicians on farm doing necropsies and taking pictures and sending them back to the veterinary office.Nobody's ever evaluated that to see whether that technique actually results in accurate diagnostics.This final project will then do some of that primary evaluation.

Dr. Harding expects this work to benefit swine producers and swine veterinarians, the veterinary students conducting the research and the pigs.
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Bruce Cochrane.