Pork producer councils in the four western provinces, in partnership with the Offices of the Provincial Chief Veterinary Officers, have established a Western Canadian Swine Health Intelligence Network to assume responsibility for swine health surveillance in western Canada.

Dr Egan Brockhoff, from Prairie Swine Health Services in Red Deer, told those participating in Alberta Pork's monthly telephone town hall last week, the Western Canadian Swine Health Intelligence Network is one of three arms working across Canada focusing on disease monitoring and disease knowledge transfer.

Dr Egan Brockhoff-Prairie Swine Health Services:

Western Canada has this western swine health intelligence network and Ontario has built an Ontario Swine Health Network and of course Quebec has their long standing monitoring system as well.

Those three systems are working together with the Canadian Swine Health Intelligence Network, which came out of the Canadian Swine Health Board, really to protect Canada's pig herd from new disease, from emerging disease and help inform people what's happening with disease that we have endemic in the country.

This is just a wonderful system.

It keeps people informed about what's going on in the industry and we're encouraging all veterinarians to participate and all producers to encourage their veterinarians to participate and then engaging with your veterinarian to find out what's going on and have your veterinarian to continue to communicate with you.

Dr Brockhoff said this is a great way to keep our finger on the pulse of the health of pigs in western Canada.

He noted Alberta Pork has been a leader in supporting the development of this program and anyone with questions should feel free to contact Alberta Pork for more information.