In an interview at the recent annual meeting of the Manitoba Pork Council, Mark Fynn, Manager, Quality Assurance and Animal Care Programs describe a new prototype of a disease response trailer.
“We recognized the need for a trailer to help us deal with disease situations in the province, especially when we look at the threats of African Swine Fever and even PED virus. We realized there was a need to develop a disease response trailer to be able to help in those situations,” said Fynn. “Yeah, the disease response trailer is meant to help with making sure that we can help euthanize pigs and give them a better death than they would otherwise have. Like sick pigs that need euthanizing, and so that’s the purpose of it.”
He said the situations where they recognize a need for it would be like some of the PED barns they dealt with where a lot of those pigs are quite sick, and they would go on to die themselves and a much worse death than if someone euthanizes them.
“We do the euthanasia, but it’s very hard on staff. Like no one that’s cared for the animals wants to go and euthanize the animals,” Fynn said. “And so we’re trying to develop the technology that provides very humane death for the animals and takes the stress off the workers too.”
He said the prototype trailer that they are working on helps them set designs.
“Then we’ll learn some lessons as well on the design of it too so that if we do want to build additional trailers in the future, we can,” said Fynn. “This particular prototype trailer will be ready very soon for us in Manitoba, but we realize a lot of other areas also deal with similar issues when they’re responding to disease. And so we want to make that technology available to them as well if they’re in need for it.”
Building this prototype is a collaborative effort.
“Yes, especially in getting this disease response trailer built. It’s quite a big investment, but we recognize the need to make sure that we can do euthanasia very well and we can help people handle the mental stress of it,” he said. “We’ve invested 1.5 million dollars in developing this trailer helped by our provincial and federal governments, Alberta Pork and Sask Pork. But Manitoba Pork has put a large contribution into making sure that we can get this done and do it right.”
Fynn said the next step is making it readily available and making those designs available as well.
“We want to make sure that this technology can help other pork producers, other people, and other pig industries across the country and the world. The prototype will be a functional trailer that we can use. If we have lessons learned about how to improve it for future situations, then we have that, and we can scale that out. But this one will be functioning to help us with those very tricky situations,” he added. •
— By Harry Siemens