Ottawa Helps Improve Swine Health Surveillance

Canada’s hog sector, which includes over 8000 hog farms, is a key driver of the Canadian economy, accounting for $4.5 billion in farm receipts and $4 billion in pork exports in 2017

Parliamentary Secretary Jean-Claude Poissant, on behalf of Agriculture and Agri-Food Minister Lawrence MacAulay, recently announced investments of over $1.5 million to support animal health and disease surveillance in the hog sector.

“Our Government continues to help the hog sector grow and remain competitive,” stated Poissant, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Agriculture and Agri-food. “Canada’s pork producers are known throughout the world for producing safe, high quality products. These investments will further strengthen, and help bring stability to the sector and provide pork producers with more opportunities to sell their products abroad, helping to grow our economy and our middle class.”

The Government will invest up to $1.5 million in the Canadian Pork Council (CPC) 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.

“Canadian pork producers welcome this investment in research and development from the Government of Canada in the area of swine health”

“Canadian pork producers welcome this investment in research and development from the Government of Canada in the area of swine health,” said Rick Bergmann, Canadian Pork Council Chair. “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.”

This complements a previous investment of more than $94,000 to the University of Montréal (UdeM) 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 UdeM’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.

“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.”
– Estela Cornaglia, DVM, PhD, Director of the Diagnostic Service, Faculty of Veterinary Medecine, Université de Montréal

Canada is the 7th largest pork producer in the world, representing approximately 2% of global production. Canadian pork is known around the world for its premium quality, taste, safety, and commitment to following the highest standards in production.

Source: Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada