Western Canada's support for Swine Health and Disease Surveillance
About CWSHIN
CWSHIN serves western swine producers, swine herd practitioners and governments to improve swine health, production, and the economic prosperity of the sector.
Our vision is to have a surveillance system imbedded in an intelligence network that monitors diseases both present and absent.
The core of the surveillance system is the quarterly conference calls which bring together swine herd veterinarians and swine health experts in western Canada. Prior to the calls, CWSHIN collects clinical impression surveys completed by practitioners, laboratory data and other publicly available data such as federal inspected abattoir data. The data is then analyzed and presented for discussion during the calls.
CWSHIN Objectives
Surveillance System
The surveillance system will be monitoring and assessing trends over time to:
- Detect new emerging swine health issues;
- Detect unusual clinical presentation of known diseases;
- Provide information about endemic diseases; and,
- For diseases absent in western Canada (such as Foot and Mouth Disease and African Swine Fewer) the objective is to help provide evidence of the absence of disease to support trade
What's New
CWSHIN has a new activity “Targeted Emerging Issue Investigation” where we have the opportunity to investigate health issues that have been flagged as new or important to the swine sector. The first laboratory investigation is on Streptococcus.
Starting in April 2021, Streptococcus cases identified by Prairie Diagnostic Services (PDS) or Veterinary Diagnostic services (VDS) may be selected for further testing and
...For the fourth quarter of 2020, we can report that the general swine health in the region was good. Now, we also have results from the Clinical Impression Surveys provided by swine practitioners in the region for the entire 2020. We are happy to say that we had a good representation of swine health in the region. We follow-up from last quarter on Porcine Epidemic Diarrhea (PED) and Streptococcus equi zooepidemicus.
Follow-up
...No reason to be overly concerned. A spin off of the COVID-19 situation seems to be that researchers around the world scrutinize the family of coronavirus and media are more likely to pick up stories about even negligible potential health threats in humans and animals. That in itself does not mean there are more health threats to humans or animals, but it means that health professionals will be faced with more questions about these potential
...Governance
The CWSHIN Board of Directors is comprised of representatives from each of the western pork boards, with the western provincial agriculture ministries holding ex-officio status. The Manager of CWSHIN reports to the Board and oversees all of the organization’s activities. Within the organization, there are two working groups providing additional leadership and guidance: the Quarterly Team and the Scientific Technical Group.
Management
Dr. Jette Christensen DVM, PhD, joined CWSHIN in April 2018.
Dr. Christensen has 30 years of experience in all phases of national animal health monitoring, surveillance and disease control programs gained from field work in Denmark and Canada, including:
- General veterinary practice as one of two veterinarians serving more than 110 swine producers
- National animal surveillance in Denmark with: Danish veterinary Service (veterinary authority); Danish Bacon and Meat Council (national swine industry); Veterinary Laboratory (national reference laboratory)
- National surveillance in Canada with the Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA) from 2001-2017
