To further reduce the risk of exposing swine herds to disease, pork producers are being encouraged to turn farmyards into controlled access zones by installing gates to limit access.

Mark Fynn, the Manager of Quality Assurance and Animal Care Programs with Manitoba Pork, says the important question to ask is do the people coming to the site need to enter the yard or enter the barn?

Mark Fynn-Manitoba Pork

Things like feed deliveries and livestock trailers and staff at sites and veterinarians visiting the site, they're all essential to come right up to the barn and staff and vets are going into the barn as well but there's a lot of other services that don't require that sort of access to a site.

For example we have companies that remove carcasses from sites or we have companies that pick up garbage or do something like that.

It's possible for the site to move those pickups from their bins to the end of their driveway so that those companies don't actually have to come into the yard at all.

Then we have companies that deliver supplies and equipment and that sort of thing.

Can that stuff be picked up off site so that it's only the producer's vehicle that's going on an off the site and not having multiple people come in and out.

There's a number of service providers that aren't really essential to come into the yard and especially aren't essential to come into the barn and what we're really doing is trying to encourage people as much as possible to evaluate those things.

The idea of putting up a gate at the end of the driveway and insisting on those people calling the barn before coming onto the site allows for one more opportunity for the producer to evaluate whether that person does need to come into the yard or not or come into the barn or not.

Mr Fynn says keeping traffic flow into the yard to a minimum is one more step toward preventing exposure to diseases.