The news
The federal government has announced $1.5 million in funding to support animal health and disease surveillance in the hog sector. The Canadian Pork Council (CPC) will use the funds to adopt a virus detection system to support animal health.
Funded under the Canadian Agricultural Partnership’s AgriAssurance Program, the virus detection system will enable the CPC to provide |consistent information on the health status of the hog population across the country, track early disease warning signs, and rapidly identify new and emerging diseases in the sector before they spread.” The Government of Canada is committed, it says, to the protection of Canada’s agricultural resources against animal diseases, such as African Swine Fever.
This latest funding builds on a project at the University of Montréal that worked to develop an advanced disease surveillance tool to enable faster threat detection across Canada.
With funding under Growing Forward 2’s AgriMarketing Program (Assurance Systems stream), the surveillance model developed by the University of Montréal’s Diagnostic Services will enable the hog sector to better understand the frequency of diseases, emerging strains, and the movement of endemic diseases in Canada, according to a news release.
Quotes
“Canadian pork producers welcome this investment in research and development from the Government of Canada in the area of swine health. This project will provide a comprehensive tests to laboratories and will help veterinarians and producers manage the Canadian hog herd. Furthermore, using the data obtained through this project to inform disease surveillance activities will greatly benefit the industry and help prepare for disease mitigation.” says Rick Bergmann, CPC chair.
“The project established the base of a model for sharing and managing swine microorganism sequences in Canada. This represents a structuring, complementary and synergic basis for surveillance to understand strain emergence and movement of economically important endemic diseases in Canada,” says Estela Cornaglia, DVM, PhD, director of the diagnostic service, Faculty of Veterinary Medecine, Université de Montréal.
By the numbers
Canada’s hog sector, which includes more than 8000 hog farms, accounted for $4.5 billion in farm receipts and $4 billion in pork exports in 2017.
Canada is the 7th largest pork producer in the world, representing approximately two per cent of global production.
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