Farmscape for December 11, 2018

Swine Health Ontario has established a response team to be prepared to deal with the next emerging swine health crisis.
To be prepared for the next emerging disease issue in Ontario, Swine Health Ontario has established an incident command centre structure.
Dr. Catherine Templeton, a partner with South West Ontario Veterinary Services and a Swine Health Ontario leadership team member, told an African Swine Fever Telephone Town Hall, last week, the structure is designed prepare responders before there is an animal health crisis.

Clip-Dr. Catherine Templeton-Swine Health Ontario:
There is an established system for crisis management.
It's been in other crises such as forest fires or other major catastrophes and that gives an established team specific roles for each person in the team and each part of the team, backup for each person in the team and it provides training to start people to understand their roles before a crisis occurs.
In reviewing what we did with the PED situation, although the response was very successful, we felt that the efficiency could be improved if we had a coordinated approach so this is our attempt at this.
Training is underway, manuals are being constructed and we look to carry out a partial activation which means we will have active jobs for each of the people in the incident command centre structure.
Those people will be given specific tasks to follow up on to get ready as it were for any break.
We are grateful for the support of a CAP grant for this initiative.

Dr. Templeton says Swine Health Ontario is ready to lead the industry and coordinate response with government for the next emerging disease.
For Farmscape.Ca, I'm Bruce Cochrane.

       *Farmscape is a presentation of Sask Pork and Manitoba Pork