APHIN LIVES
Reports of the demise of Ontario's Animal Productivity and Health Information Network, have been exaggerated, say officials
By ROBERT IRWIN
Don't believe published news reports or rumours that the Animal Productivity and Health Information Network is dead. "We've never questioned proceeding," says Rick Scragg, chairman of Ontario Pork Grading Authority (OPGA), a producer-packer joint venture which is managing APHIN in Ontario.
In fact, OPGA hopes to soon unveil plans for new electronic identification which will speed up the system and boost accuracy for the fledgling Ontario project.
APHIN is a computer-based system which harvests information from carcasses at slaughter, allowing producers and their veterinarians to determine not only carcass characteristics but detailed herd health information. For example, the APHIN graph in Fig. One, overleaf, helped a PEI producer improve internal parasite control in his herd.
The graph shows the average parasite levels for other similarly sized herds and a marked decline in worm spots in the individual producer's herd. APHIN director Dan Hurnik, one of APHIN's original developers, notes the producer began cleaning pens more frequently and APHIN allowed him to see the results easily. "He didn't have to spend more money on wormers," Hurnik says.
Fig. Two shows the disastrous results when another PEI producer with a relatively healthy herd accidentally introduced PRRS and Mycoplas-ma Pneumonia. In August, 1995, lungs with signs of pneumonia skyrocketed from around 10 per cent, well below the average for similar sized herds, to a whopping 80 per cent.
Fig. Three provides dramatic reassurance to another PEI producer who rented an additional farm and repopulated his herd. Around August, 1995, when shipments from the old herd were replaced by repopulated animals, lungs with signs of pneumonia plunged from around 80 per cent to almost zero.
Until APHIN, slaughter checks have only been available on a spot basis. Producers or their vets could sometimes get information on a specific shipment by visiting the plant or through the Ontario government herd health program used by breeding stock suppliers.
Doug MacDougald, Wellesly, who has specialized in swine herd health for about 10 years, recently installed special APHIN software in his office. "Now information can come directly from PEI via the Internet; we're pretty exited about that," MacDougald says.
Using APHIN data, he will be able to make custom health graphs for individual clients, who will get faster turn-around and more frequent updates.
In Ontario, producers pay about one cent per hog for APHIN, which is provided under contract by the University of PEI. Packers pay the other penny the program costs.
APHIN doesn't record data from every animal slaughtered. The idea is to collect enough information for an on-going profile of an individual's herd as well as a profile of the larger provincial herd.
OPGA president Cheryl McLach-lan estimates that in the past six months, data has been collected from about 20 per cent of pigs slaughtered at Maple Leaf and Quality Meats, Ontario's two largest plants. She says the data provides an accurate picture of the provincial herd, but until planned changes in animal identification are sorted out, data for individual operations could be suspect.
The program has performed flawlessly for about five years in PEI, where it originated as a research project in 1985. In Ontario, a pilot project at the former JM Schneider plant in Kitchener worked well but organizers have been challenged by higher volumes at Quality and Maple Leaf.
Difficulties centre on a doughnut transponder which is scanned and attached to animals at the beginning of the kill line then scanned again and removed at the end. One problem occurs if workers coping with high line speeds fail to scan or reprogram the transponder properly or to ensure correct identification of the animal it is attached to.
Bill Hack, co-owner of William Hack and Sons, a 230-sow farrow-to-finish operation near London, was disappointed when he learned there were doubts about the accuracy of initial information about his herd. He had been carefully monitoring for worm spots and pneumonia.
But he's still enthusiastic about APHIN. "Like anything which is being pioneered, there's always a few glitches that go with it," he says.
Hack also wants to use APHIN to regularly benchmark grading results against provincial norms. His average shipping weights range between 86 and 92 kg and he wants to ensure that he isn't sacrificing more than an index point by being several kg above the provincial average.
At press time, Quality Meats was evaluating a new electronic identification system already in use at some large American plants. Scragg estimates the cost at between $120,000 and $150,000.
It appears that the system would solve the accuracy problem. Scragg thinks the investment might be "an opportunity for a joint venture with producers."
In Ontario, APHIN is currently only available to producers whose pigs go to Maple Leaf or Quality but plans are underway to introduce it at Connestoga Packers followed by a number of provincial abattoirs.
DUTCH HOG CHOLERA
A tough lesson in cross-border transport rules. Here's one farmer's story.
By ROBERT IRWIN
Ton van Lieshout began to worry early last June when the Dutch government imposed a ban in his area on breeding sows and ordered the destruction of pigs under three weeks old. For van Lieshout, it would mean the death of 300 pigs every two weeks.
The move was part of a Dutch government effort to eradicate Classical Swine Fever (CSF), known in Canada as Hog Cholera. Ultimately, the CSF outbreak was traced to a truck returning from Germany, where an unusually cold winter may have hampered cleaning. With Canada poised to relax clean-out requirements for livestock trucks returning from the U.S. under proposed new import regulations, the Dutch experience is an unfortunate cautionary tale.
Twenty-three and single, van Lieshout joined his family's 190-sow farrow- to-finish operation near Uden, in the south of Holland, after completing a swine program at agricultural school in August 1996.
Van Lieshout's anxiety rose another notch June 13 when the disease hit a neighbour. Since CSF was confirmed in Holland on Feb. 4, 1997, following a five-year absence, the government followed European Community protection and surveillance zones guidelines.
Initially, transportation of livestock and manure is halted within a 10-km protection zone. Then special veterinary screening teams visit every area herd within a week. Thereafter, weekly visits are maintained.
Van Lieshout and many farmers feared the vets would spread the disease. "They put on their overalls, but sometimes they took them off in the barn when they had to take off a sweater," he recalls.
Another haunting prospect was that even if his herd escaped the disease,
it could still be wiped out in the government's culling program. Immediately
following the first two reports of CSF in February, as a preventative
measure the government destroyed 25 herds that were apparently not
infected.
This stopped for a while, but in mid-April, when the disease seemed to be raging out of control, preventative culling was reinstated for herds that could have come in contact with the disease or for those located within 1,000 metres of an infected site.
In the middle of the morning on June 16, van Lieshout learned his herd would indeed be culled. Two hours later, a couple of government appraisers dropped by to determine compensation for livestock, but they offered nothing for the all-important cash flow interruption. "These men were very friendly and gave us a fair price for our pigs," van Lieshout says.
Later that day, the slaughter of small pigs began in his barn. He can still picture the horror of a vet seated on a chair in his barn using a syringe pistol to euthanize 300 piglets brought forward by two students. "I helped them into this world, and now I see them being killed in front of me," he says.
Sows, growers and finishers were trucked away to be electrocuted. "It's weird to see sows that would be having their pigs a few days later walking on the truck," he says.
Only one truck was available, and the round trip required between three and six hours because overworked livestock transports waiting to unload were often backed up 40 to 60 deep. The sheer volume of the killing made scheduling difficult; some animals were deprived of food for lengthy periods. Because of a ban on pig movements from his area for the previous six weeks, van Lieshout's finishing pigs weighed as much as 160 to 180 kg.
Between housing the finishers in undersized pens and handling sows made unruly by feed deprivation, van Lieshout's barns were left in a shambles.
Three days later, the last animal was gone. "I finally got some rest," van Lieshout says. "I had worked from Monday at 9:30 P.M. until Thursday at noon." He also had a moment to think.
"I will remember these days forever. This farm should be my work for the next 35 years, and now I have ruined my future in three days."
The next few hours he was busy on the telephone fielding questions from curious neighbours and talking to well-wishers. "We got a lot of support from the people at the feed company," he says.
Throughout the ordeal, his parents, partners in the farm, were visiting his uncle in Ajax, Ont. "They left with a farm full of life, and they returned to a farm full of death," he observes.
Before a depopulated farm can be operated again, it requires a visit from a disinfection team that sprays sodium hydroxide everywhere. Van Lieshout spent several days washing this off the buildings and equipment, a process he began the day after the team left.
"This is against the law. I should have waited at least two days, but everybody knows if we don't act fast the iron will be ruined," he explains. Once the clean-up is finished, there is one more government inspection; then the operation can resume.
But the financial and emotional toll of CSF spelled an end to farming for van Lieshout. Once the clean-up was finished, he accepted a job as a fieldman with Minas Serviceburo, a company that analyses manure samples for custom operators.
Van Lieshout's parents will try to carry on with a repopulated operation until they can sell the farm and retire when his father turns 60 in two years. Like all farmers in Holland, they must now adhere to dozens of new regulations. This includes changes in sow housing, locked doors on barns, providing special roads for incoming vehicles, and recording names and licence numbers of all visitors, who must shower in and change. Any time more than two pigs are treated, a vet must collect blood samples.
Van Lieshout says that by telling his story, he hopes to make producers in countries like Canada appreciate their swine health status and avoid unnecessary risks. In the final analysis, 30 per cent of the Dutch swine population was destroyed.