Farmscape for December 1, 2025

Saskatchewan's Chief Veterinary Officer says more than ever pork sector stakeholders are working together to address swine disease.
"ASF and Emerging Diseases; What should you be concerned about at the farm today" was among the topics discussed in November as part of Saskatchewan Pork Industry Symposium 2025 in Saskatoon.
Dr. Stephanie Smith, the Chief Veterinary Officer and director of the veterinary unit with the Saskatchewan Ministry of Agriculture, says approaches to disease prevention have evolved over the past 10 to 20 years.

Quote-Dr. Stephanie Smith-Saskatchewan Agriculture:
Primarily the biggest change has been the integration of industry.
There's been a lot over time where the federal government has really taken a driving role, the provincial governments are starting to come on board.
But, particularly with the formation of Animal Health Canada nationally, there's a big push to do this together and really that is because we recognise it's going to be a real challenge.
We need to collaborate.
I would say how we quantify is really through our health and surveillance networks.
We have our Canadian animal health surveillance system and specifically we have a number of swine networks.
Again, coming back to how the veterinarians are working on these surveillance networks, we have industry and veterinarians working together to look across the country, what are our patterns of disease, what are the disease outbreaks occurring and talking about what strategies we can use.
I would say we have very good infrastructure here.
Where we're at on each disease depends on every point in time but we have a good infrastructure to be able to support us.
I think all of it comes down to biosecurity, is really that key piece.
Trying our best to stop those diseases from entering at the door, making that we have changes in boots, shower in shower out, not bringing in products that could be affected, not having other species being able to enter the barns.
On that front, I would say the swine sector one of those ones that is probably best placed to be able to keep some of those diseases out.
That's really that first layer of defence and then from there it's about things like nutrition, like minimising stress and working with their veterinarians on vaccination and deworming protocols to try to mitigate those other factors.

Dr. Smith says the biggest piece right now is around that culture of preparedness and understanding what we need to be ready for, whether it’s a foreign animal disease or an endemic disease.
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Bruce Cochrane.

       *Farmscape is produced on behalf of North America’s pork producers