A National Biosecurity Training programme developed by the Canadian Swine Health Board and launched earlier this year in Quebec, Ontario and Manitoba was among the topics discussed last week as part of the third Canadian Swine Health Forum.

Dr Martin Bonneau, the Canadian Association of Swine Veterinarians representative on the Canadian Swine Health Board's Long Term Disease Risk Management Committee, reports over one thousand sites have already registered in Quebec and 662 of those sites have received training and will be setting up veterinary visits.

Dr Martin Bonneau-Canadian Association of Swine Veterinarians

In our province we've got quite a few veterinarians available to do those kinds of training and the producers so far have responded quite well.

The financial incentives sponsored by the Canadian Swine Health Board help a lot, the veterinarians first talk about that with their producers and also for the producer to take that opportunity.

They receive some money just to attend the training.

They also receive, it's not big money but just enough to help them to try to look at ways to improve their biosecurity and also the money the veterinarian receives is used for a vet visit.

At the same time there's that evaluation that has to be done, the veterinary evaluation for biosecurity for the national program, while at the same veterinarians can do other things on the farm, review the health, the overall health, the PRRS control plan, all that kind of thing and the producer has another 500 in vet fees to be able to go through that with them.

That incentive looks like something enough for them to go through the process and so far they've responded very well.

Dr Bonneau says the intent is to get as many producers involved as possible so organizers are hoping to maintain the momentum.

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