February 13, 2020
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A growing threat of African swine fever (ASF) has convinced US pork producers to prepare for the worst with a Secure Pork Supply plan, reports Paul Yeske, DVM, Swine Vet Center, St. Peter, Minnesota.
“The Secure Pork Supply (SPS) plan was put together as a mission to improve biosecurity and to help make sure [if] a foreign animal disease enters the country that we have a plan for farms to survive,” he said.
The voluntary SPS plans help producers implement a more complete biosecurity plan to assure others that their herd is negative. This will allow the farm to continue business and move pigs, if needed, in the face of a foreign animal disease outbreak such as ASF.
SPS plans underway
In most cases, veterinarians are helping producers work through the plans.
“That’s been one of our roles — work with clients to set up the biosecurity plans, to help designate the sites, draw the maps of the sites and help make sure the program is set up properly,” Yeske said.
“Many of our clients have started the process and many have already completed it,” he added.
In some states, veterinarians are asked to validate the SPS procedures are correctly implemented.
Veterinarians also may be needed to train others on how to test for ASF if the disease is identified in the US. “It becomes a very big biosecurity risk to go out and do testing on the positive or suspect farms,” Yeske said.
“One of the things that’s being looked at is can we do like they did with avian influenza. They had trained people who were able to go out and collect samples. This will be once we’ve had a positive, and we’re in the situation where we need to know the status of many herds,” he explained.
Next-level biosecurity
Even without a foreign animal-disease outbreak, SPS plans are valuable.
“Secure Pork Supply takes biosecurity to the next level,” Yeske said. “I think these plans are a great opportunity to review some of the procedures you’re already doing and strengthen some of the weak areas.
“I hope we never have to use it,” he added. “The reality is that I think we all have to really pay attention to this one because we’ve seen just how fast it can move with other diseases such as porcine epidemic diarrhea virus.”
For more information about Secure Pork Supply, visit securepork.org.