Pork Producers Advised to Create Comprehensive Biosecurity Plans

Farmscape for October 1, 2021

The Director of Swine Health with the National Pork Board is encouraging pork producers to develop relationships with and to work with their herd veterinarians to develop comprehensive biosecurity plans.
ASF and the Benefits of Biosecurity was the focus of an ASF Action Week Webinar hosted last month by USDA-APHIS.
Dr. Pam Zaabel, the Director of Swine Health with the National Pork Board, recommends the use of the biosecurity plan templates available at securepork.org.

Clip-Dr. Pam Zaabel-National Pork Board:
There are two different types of templates.
One is for animals raised indoors only and the other one is a combination for animals with outdoor access or possibly raised indoors also.
They kind of walk you through writing the biosecurity plan.
When we talk about secure pork and these biosecurity plans, one of the things we talk about is a site map.
These maps do take time to create but what they do provide is they give us a chance to start thinking about the inputs and outputs that move around our sites.
So, we ask that there's certain lines drawn on the site as far as the line of separation, access points, those kinds of things.
What that does is it helps us think about how we're moving things around our site to think if there's pathways that maybe we can alter, things that we can do to minimise cross traffic between those inputs coming on like feed trucks and the foot traffic around the site, like producers or caretakers when they're moving around the site between the barns or something like they're moving deads from the barns.
At securepork.org we do have example maps available for animals that are raised indoors versus those animals with outdoor access.

Dr. Zaabel encourages producers to work with their herd veterinarians in creating these plans.
She says they are a good recourse in understanding the risks and in providing input and independent oversight.
For more google ASF action week or visit Farmscape.Ca.
Bruce Cochrane.

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