Farmscape for January 11, 2021

The Executive Director of the Canadian Pork Council says the focus of Canada's African Swine Fever Action plan revolves around four pillars, preparedness, business continuity and communication.
The topic "What is Canada Doing to Face the Threat of ASF?" was discussed last week as part of a Swine Innovation Porc on line African Swine Fever preparedness seminar.
John Ross, the Executive Director of the Canadian Pork Council, says Canada's African Swine Fever Action plan is built on four pillars.

Clip-John Ross-Canadian Pork Council:
The four pillars, biosecurity, really this is this whole prevention space that is so important and none of this other exercise that we have to go through happens if we can just avoid the disease all together so we have a big focus on biosecurity at the border and on our farms.
There's a section on preparedness.
This is about getting ready.
Do we have the procedures in place, do we have the right surveillance program in place, do we know how to use things like pen side testing, do our labs know how to test, a whole series of preparedness exercises that will enable us to respond quickly if we have to and to respond in a very effective manner.
Business continuity, a big piece.
You can imagine, if 70 percent of our sales are stopped, either sales of pork or sales of live pigs because we break with ASF.
How do we keep that entire chain intact while we don't have access for 70 percent of our sales and so we have a business continuity group that's investigating that space.
Last but not least is the communications exercise and it is an extraordinarily complex one, quite a big span of work to be done in that group.

Ross says the collective efforts of the federal and provincial governments and industry are serving the pork sector well.
He says the principles of collaboration and cooperation being demonstrated in dealing with African Swine Fever apply to other diseases and challenges that face the industry.
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Bruce Cochrane.

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