Friday, December 30, 2022

Saskatchewan engages truckers to reduce disease spread

Farm Health Guardian of Guelph is partnering with the Saskatchewan Pork Development Board to test truck-tracking monitors that could reduce the risk of diseases spreading among hog farms.

Rob Hannam, chief executive officer for Farm Health Guardian, said  Saskatchewan has remote locations, cell service can be spotty and not every barn has WIFI so not all technologies work on all farms.


There are 26 different pig farms that volunteered to be part of the pilot.


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, he said.


Disease can move through the air, it can move from pig to pig but when pigs move, they move on a truck so the trucks and 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, the partners said.


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, they said.


To do that we need to also respect the confidentially and privacy of those different haulers, Hannam said.