Farmscape for December 24, 2020

A partner in Polar Pork Farms says high herd health remains one of the western Canadian pork sectors most precious advantages.
Six years ago Porcine Epidemic Diarrhea surfaced in North America ultimately causing the loss of an estimated eight million hogs and stimulating an expanded focus on biosecurity.
Florian Possberg, a partner in Polar Pork Farms, says while Saskatchewan has remained PED free the risk of disease continues to escalate.

Clip-Florian Possberg-Polar Pork Farms:
For our business, being here in North America, the most direct impact on our swine industry in 2020 was COVID because of plants that shut down in the United States and in Canada for periods of time, created big backlogs of market hogs that couldn't be harvested.
That really had a terrible impact on our industry for most of the late spring and summer of 2020.
Internationally though African Swine fever is devastating southeast Asia, China Cambodia, Philippines, Korea, South Korea.
That continues to have a big impact there.
It's believed that in the last two years, at the peak in China which has almost half the pigs in the world, it's estimated that they lost 65 percent of their herd at the peak of the infection and it's even spreading through Europe.
It's been identified in the wild boar herds in Germany so Germany can not ship to a lot of international importers of pork and that again is having an impact on our business.

Possberg says having a healthy herd has been one of the Saskatchewan pork sector's big advantages and the hope is that it will continue to be an advantage in 2021 and beyond.
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Bruce Cochrane.

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