Majority of Pigs in Western Canada Now Covered by Swine Monitoring and Surveillance

The Manager of the Canada West Swine Health Intelligence Network reports most of the pigs produced in Manitoba, Saskatchewan, Alberta and B.C. are now represented in the region's swine health monitoring and surveillance programs.

 

Changes made by the Canada West Swine Health Intelligence Network in 2019 have allowed a more detailed determination of who contributes to its swine health surveillance and monitoring programs and what proportion of the swine sector they represent. CWSHIN Manager Dr. Jette Christensen says the results of those changes are just now starting to be seen.

 

Clip-Dr. Jette Christensen-Canada West Swine Health Intelligence Network:

 

We invite basically all practitioners that we know of that do swine work in our region. Some of these practices are big practices with many veterinarians doing the swine work and some are smaller mixed practices that only have a few swine clients. From our list of practitioners that get the survey, 76 percent of the practices have contributed to CWSHIN in 2020.

 

That means that we have a very good representation of the commercial swine sector in the western region. We have about 14 hundred premises that potentially are served by these practices. That is very close to the number of premises that are registered in PigTrace, it's more than are registered with the Canadian Quality Assurance and it's less than farms with swine that are registered in Statistics Canada because of some those farms that are registered in Statistics Canada is really small holders and may only have a few pigs.

 

Over all that means that, when we report results from the clinical impressions survey, we are really covering most of the commercial or the majority of the commercial swine sector in the region, which is very good news.

Video: Evolution of Beef Cattle Farming

The Clear Conversations podcast took to the road for a special episode recorded in Nashville during CattleCon, bringing listeners straight into the heart of the cattle industry. Host Tracy Sellers welcomed rancher Steve Wooten of Beatty Canyon Ranch in Colorado for a wide-ranging discussion that blended family history and sustainability, particularly as it relates to the future of beef production.

Sustainability emerged as a central theme of the conversation, a word that Wooten acknowledges can mean very different things depending on who you ask. For him, sustainability starts with the soil. Healthy soil produces healthy grass, which supports efficient cattle capable of producing year after year with minimal external inputs. It’s an approach that equally considers vegetation, animal efficiency, and long-term profitability.

That philosophy aligned naturally with Wooten’s involvement in the U.S. Roundtable for Sustainable Beef, where he served as a representative for the Colorado Cattlemen’s Association. The roundtable brings together the entire beef supply chain—from producers to retailers—along with universities, NGOs, and allied industries. Its goal is not regulation, Wooten emphasized, but collaboration, shared learning, and continuous improvement.