Started several years ago, the Secure Pork Supply plan, or SPS, is a voluntary program providing resources to pork producers to prepare for foreign animal diseases through traceability, biosecurity, and disease monitoring. Dr. Pam Zaabel, National Pork Board director of swine health, said starting with traceability might raise a need for producers to update their premise information.
?We’re looking at getting that premises identification number to reflect the actual location of the animals,? Dr. Zaabel said. ?Some people, when they got them early on when they were available, we’d get them with the sight of an office, that sort of thing. It’s really important that they reflect the actual location of the animals.?
The biosecurity plan has templates available for each operation site. Dr. Zaabel said the plan isn?t what protects your operation- rather, it?s the implementation of said plan.
?What can I do in the next 30 days, 60 days, maybe it’s bigger,? Dr. Zaabel said. ?Ask, you know, one section of the plan and let’s look at how we can implement that over the next year. And so, it’s writing the plan with your veterinarian figuring out where those risks are and what you can implement, and then actually implementing what is doable now which can also help protect you against those endemic diseases that we battle too.?
Dr. Zaabel also advised producers to break down SPS into smaller steps.
?The producers, the caretakers that are in the barn, they’re looking at the animals every day- they know when something’s off,? Dr. Zaabel said. ?And it’s just to make sure that you have those production parameters set so that they know at what point who to call when something wonky is going on in the barn. Is it that they call a manager, or is it that they call the veterinarian??
For more information and resources, visit securepork.org.
