Fighting ‘invisible’ diseases and pathogen challenges can be a tall order for pig producers
Uninformed pig producers could be inadvertently wasting valuable time and money treating pig conditions āin the darkā.
Producers are being reminded that this doesnāt need to be so, as the answers to some of these issues could be found in abattoir reports.
"Some producers may have the mantra that what they donāt see wonāt hurt them, but this isnāt the case as subclinical diseases are prevalent on many farms and can have a big impact on both a unitās physical and financial performance," says Emma Bailey-Beech, AHDB Pork food safety project manager.
"Subclinical diseases present a challenge because there are no visible signs that an infection is present, making them hard to detect.
"Historically, producers had no way of understanding the levels of subclinical diseases pressure that their unit was under.
"However, this changed with the introduction of the British Pig Health Scheme (BPHS), in 2005," says Emma.
"The health monitoring scheme screens pigs at slaughter for incidence and severity of animal disease on member farms and Iād urge producers to take advantage of this service and analyse their herdsā post-mortem data."
Collection and Communication of Inspection Results
BPHS will be phased out from March 2017, however producers will then receive similar reports based on Collection and Communication of Inspection Results (CCIR) from the Food Standards Agency (FSA) meat inspectors in the abattoir.
Cheryl Barker, health co-ordinator at AHDB Pork, says AHDB Pork holds BPHS health data for thousands of pigs that have been sent to the 12 abattoirs being assessed, but many producers sending the pigs are not currently taking advantage of this information.
"We can only share data with producers who are signed up to the scheme. For this reason, Iād encourage anyone that isnāt yet, to sign up to BPHS now to furnish themselves with accurate baseline information regarding their herd health ā ready for the new CCIR system when it arrives," says Cheryl.
"CCIR will offer similar information to BPHS but it will be streamlined," she adds.
AHDB Pork has been working closely with industry and continues to work with FSA and its meat inspectors, to ensure that CCIR is accurate and validated before BPHS is phased out.
BPHS is a free service available to all English pig producers and they can sign up online: http://pork.ahdb.org.uk/health-welfare/health/safe-traceable-pork/bphs/bphs-registration/