Swine Health Certification System
The USDA is projecting strong sales for pork producers this year but only if the US can keep African Swine Fever out of the country’s swine stock.
The Agency says it is working with the University of Iowa to create a Swine Health Certification System. The program would be based on the National Poultry Improvement Plan.
The plan would include a set of standards for each grower in every state that participates.
Rochette: “Those would include a certain level of surveillance. Those would include bio-security standards, things that they’re doing to prevent the introduction of African Swine Fever on their farms. Those would include some sort of relationship and additional communication with their state and federal government.”
The USDA news service spoke with Lisa Rochette, Assistant Director of Swine Health.
Rochette: “I don’t think that anyone can certify without a doubt that their farm is free at any given moment but the certification would ensure that they’re doing the surveillance and they’ve implemented the protective measures to prevent disease to the fullest extent possible from coming on to the farm and that they’re testing appropriately to identify the disease quickly and that they are able to communicate quickly whenever they have disease.”
The USDA says the proposed Swine Health Certification System is becoming more necessary as US pork producers become more reliant on export sales as well as multi-state production operations. The initial plan would focus on guarding against African Swine Fever and classical Swine Fever.
