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
Four of the five health issues identified for discussion could mask African Swine Fever (ASF).
This quarter we applied a new guide with formalized monitoring, thresholds for frequency of conditions (flags, signals, runs), and actions (further exploration of data and discussion) (Link to summary of the Epidemiologic
...With the documentation of the Data Repository, Disease Map, and a new epidemiologic analysis we can now describe the surveillance in CWSHIN as a functional ongoing and sustainable temporal surveillance of clinical health issues in swine.
CWSHIN’s Data Repository and Disease Map has been functioning with quarterly updates since 2019. The next step towards a documented functional ongoing surveillance has now been completed with
...CWSHIN is proud to announce that we have published our method to combine data in a peer reviewed journal. We hope this will contribute to our branding and credibility as a swine health surveillance system. You can access the article at Link to article in PVM
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
