Swine Transport Vehicle Tracking Technology Being Assessed in Saskatchewan

A study underway in Saskatchewan will provide pork producers in Saskatchewan a clearer idea of which swine transport vehicle movement tracking technology works best on their farms

Guelph based Farm Health Guardian and the Saskatchewan Pork Development Board are collaborating on a pilot project to assess the performance of technologies designed to track swine transport vehicle movements.

Farm Health Guardian CEO Rob Hannam says Saskatchewan has remote locations, cell service can be spotty and n

“It’s more than just the livestock truck. It’s the feed truck, the maintenance truck, and whoever else was on the farm” 

“There are 26 different pig farms that volunteered to be part of the pilot. What we did is we placed different technologies, different devices in 10 different trucks that go to those farms on a regular basis just so we could monitor do those devices work on those 26 farms?

“Livestock trailers are identified as one of the risks in biosecurity.

“Disease can move through the air, it can move from pig to pig but when pigs move on a truck –  whether they’re cleaned out or not or whether they’re washed or baked – those are important factors and so monitoring those livestock trucks is quite important.

“But, if there is a disease outbreak, it’s more than just the livestock truck. It’s the feed truck, it’s the maintenance truck, who else was on the farm so we’re trying to link that whole network together.
To do that we need to also respect the confidentially and privacy of those different haulers.

“Maybe it’s fed company A and feed company B, they both might be implicated here but we have to keep that data confidential and separate.

“So, we’re just recording the movement on and off of the farm property, that’s it. We’re not recording the truck route, it’s just that simple on and off because that’s all we need to know if they were there or not during the incubation period of a suspect disease.”

Hannam says, so far, some of the technologies have worked and some have not.
He says those that haven’t worked have been shelved and others are being assessed and, in a few months, we’ll have a better idea of the two or three things that work reliably in Saskatchewan.

Farmscape is produced on behalf of North America’s pork producers