Farmscape for November 9, 2009   (Episode 3342)

The Canadian Association of Swine Veterinarians reports random audits indicate 100 percent compliance with requirements of the Cull Breeding Swine Program.

The Cull Breeding Swine Program provided payments to swine producers who agreed to depopulate breeding barns and leave those barns empty of breeding swine for a minimum of three years.

As a requirement of the program random audits are being conducted to confirm compliance.

Dr. Alan Theede, the secretary treasurer of the Canadian Association of Swine Veterinarians, says 100 audits are scheduled for this round and 85 percent have been completed.

Clip-Dr. Alan Theede-Canadian Association of Swine Veterinarians:
The inspections are being done by the swine veterinarians across the country, the people that are members of our Canadian Association of Swine Veterinarians.

Really these are the practicing veterinarians that are out in the rural areas generally and have been providing animal health and management services to swine producers across the country.

We've got about 85 of the 100 finished and virtually 100 percent are in compliance.

There's a couple of sites where we've just got to go back and figure out where the animals are in relation to the cull space and so on.

In almost all cases the complete barn was culled and even in some of the cases the barns have been bulldozed down and they aren't even there any more.

But there are some sites where people for example had 100 breeding sows on their site and they've maybe rearranged the flow on their barn so that they kept 400 or 500 sows and we've just go to sort out which barn was supposed to be empty and that sort of thing.

Dr. Theede says 15 to 20 percent of the barns audited so far are now being used to house nursery or grow finish pigs, which is allowed under the program, while most of the remaining barns are either sitting empty or being used for storage or some other farm activity.

For Farmscape.Ca, I'm Bruce Cochrane.

       * Farmscape is a presentation of Sask Pork and Manitoba Pork Council