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Technology could aid in foreign disease outbreak tracing for pork industry

Tracing technology for America’s pig farmers can provide real-time disease status updates and pig movement data in case of a foreign disease outbreak.

Regional Manager with the National Pork Board Rob Christine tells Brownfield “Ag View” is a secure app and technology program that delivers information on pig movements to animal health officials. “We need to identify where these locations are in a timely fashion.  If you don’t have a system like this in place to prove that you have not been cross contaminated from within the state or out of the state, you may not be able to move pigs in that time frame.”

He says producers would benefit from technology like this in the event of a stop movement order. “Pigs have to go to market.  We market on a weekly basis.   Pigs can get backed up really quick, so we run into a really serious situation on what to do from a flow standpoint in a pig operation.”

Christine says the technology is voluntary, and free and paid for through check-off dollars and information can only be shared with a producer’s permission.