A new tool is now available to help pork producers create plans for dealing with unexpected emergencies.
In collaboration with the National Pork Board, National Pork Producers Council and Swine Health Information Center, the American Association of Swine Veterinarians has released a new tool to assist farmers and veterinarians with developing crisis operating plans.
Swine Health Information Center Executive Director Dr. Paul Sundberg said the tool, developed in response to COVID-19. Still, producers can use it to prepare for any type of disruption that might disrupt the supply or disrupt the workers or others.
“Certainly, we think of this COVID-19 situation as potentially disrupting supplies and operations, but you might also consider fires, natural disasters, foreign animal disease outbreaks,” said Dr. Sundberg. “We focused on anything that could disrupt normal operations on the farm.”
He said the best plans are poor if they aren’t written down because everybody needs to have clear directions. This tool gives producers, their veterinarians, and everybody involved the opportunity to sit down and go through a list of questions and points.
“Where do we get this from, how do we do without it? What happens if, what happens when? I think the real value of this is in the pre-panning and the recording of the current thoughts,” said Dr. Sundberg. “Those current thoughts very well may change, so it’s prudent to set into place yearly, or oftener, a review of the plans that will help everybody to be on the same page.”
Dr. Sundberg said producers could access this new tool through the National Pork Board, National Pork Producers Council, Swine Health Information Center or American Association of Swine Veterinarians web sites.
That will lead a producer right to the ability to download, for example, a PDF file used to fill out online and save it in his system.
“We’ve tried to give it such that you could print it out and write it out, or you can do it electronically and fill in a PDF file yourself so you can save it within your system electronically,” he said. “We’ve tried to make this as flexible as possible so people will be able to access it in any of the websites and fill it out to help them. It’s rather urgent matter right now because we still don’t know what the future holds for the next few months with COVID-19, but it’s also a good thing for longer-term planning in case other emergencies could come up that could affect operations.”
He said they developed the tool quickly, probably the last month or so, with what happened to put it into place. Sherrie Webb, with the American Association of Swine Veterinarians, led the effort. It started as, well, let’s talk about welfare and let’s look at what could happen in some instances. It quickly became broader than only welfare; there are a whole lot of different inputs into it. After a series of conference calls, making various drafts, they put it together quickly. They did an excellent job of looking at the whole comprehensive system rather than only one thing or another.
Dr. Sundberg said this is another example of the cooperation and collaboration between those associations to help producers and their veterinarians. This isn’t just a U.S. issue. It certainly is a Canadian issue, too. It’s a North American pork production issue that should help all pork producers to take a look at their operation. It might give them some guidance on how they view their readiness and their ability to respond to all kinds of issues.
“So, I think it’s a great opportunity and something that producers should take advantage of as quickly as possible.” •
— By Harry Siemens