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National Swine Health Strategy aims to boost biosecurity, reduce hog disease risk

The U.S. pork industry has been developing a National Swine Health Strategy.

Meredith Petersen with the National Pork Board says the strategy should help producers monitor and detect diseases, including Porcine Reproductive and Respiratory Syndrome and Porcine epidemic diarrhea, African Swine Fever and Foot and Mouth Disease.

“This is a set of swine health priorities created by producers that the whole industry can rally behind and work towards.”

She says it’s not a 10-step plan to eliminate disease, but there’s an end goal for this producer-led initiative.

“Raising healthy pigs is a lot more fun than raising sick pigs and I think as an industry we’re recognizing some of these big challenges in terms of swine health. It’s exciting to see producers are now saying, let’s work together to make this better.”

Petersen says farmers can start now by prioritizing herd health on their own farms, like biosecurity.

“Are you doing the simple steps you know you can do on your farm routinely? Or are you lackadaisical about it?”

Petersen tells Brownfield the strategy is expected to become available by the summer, after the National Pork Forum.

Brownfield interviewed Petersen at the Missouri Pork Expo in central Missouri.