African Swine Fever in China has everyone on standby, including hog producers, groups representing them and researchers.
Canada’s hog sector includes over 8000 hog farms and accounted for $4.5 billion in farm receipts and $4 billion in pork exports in 2017.
And now there is $1.5 million to support animal health and disease surveillance in the hog sector.
The money will go to the Canadian Pork Council to adopt a virus detection system to support animal health through the Canadian Agricultural Partnership’s AgriAssurance Program.
It's expected 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.
This is above a previous investment of more than $94,000 to the University of Montréal to develop an advanced disease surveillance tool to help the hog sector to better understand the frequency of diseases, emerging strains, and the movement of endemic diseases in Canada.
The director of Diagnostic Service at the university, Dr. Estela Cornaglia, says the project established the base of a model for sharing and managing swine microorganism sequences in Canada.
Canada is the 7th largest pork producer in the world, representing approximately 2% of global production.
