By Bruce Cochrane
A pilot project underway in western Canada is helping livestock truck wash operators improve the level of service they provide their customers.
To help reduce the risk of spreading Porcine Epidemic Diarrhea, provincial pork organizations in Manitoba, Saskatchewan and Alberta, the Canadian Pork Council, and a team of western Canadian veterinarians have rolled out the Canadian Truck Wash Facility Registration Pilot Project.
Harvey Wagner, the manager of producer services with Sask Pork, says any truck wash facility on the prairies that deals with swine livestock trailers is eligible to participate.
Harvey Wagner-Saskatchewan Pork Development Board:
What the participants get out of it is we go in there at no cost to the truck wash and do a full evaluation of the truck wash.
We have veterinarians in each province that are doing this.
They go in and look at the truck wash, how the truck wash is set up, what it looks like, what procedures they're using in the truck wash and then when they actually wash the truck what is the procedures that they're doing to get that truck eventually hopefully very clean.
It's a four hour process.
When they're done they provide a report to the truck wash of what the findings were and suggestions about how to improve the flow.
We as a project are going to take the results of these reports and we're going to analyze them and see where we think there's holes perhaps, gaps that need to be addressed.
The idea is that it's an aid to improve the truck wash, the job that these washes are doing for the hog customers and providing a good level of service or an improved level of service.
Basically it's educational.
Wagner says the project is scheduled to continue to the end of March at which point audit results will be analyzed and a report will be compiled for release by late spring or early summer.
Source: Farmscape