2014.ISDS.Abstracts.Final.pdf


ISDS Annual Conference Proceedings 2014. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-
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ISDS 2014 Conference Abstracts

Surveillance to Manage Disease on Canadian Swine 
Farms

John Berezowski*1, Chris Byra2, Egan Brockhoff3, Dan Hurnik4, Christian Klopfenstein5, 
Harold Kloeze6, Luc Bergeron7, George Charbonneau8, Francois Cardinal9, Iqbal Jamal10 
and Travis Herntier11

1University of Bern, Bern, Switzerland; 2Greenbelt Swine Veterinary Services, Chilliwack, BC, Canada; 3Prairie Swine Health Services, 
Red Deer, AB, Canada; 4Atlantic Veterinary College, Charlottetown, PE, Canada; 5Le Centre de développement du porc du Québec, 
Quebec, QC, Canada; 6Canadian Food Inspection Agency, Owen SOund, ON, Canada; 7Ministère de l’Agriculture, des Pêcheries 
et de l’Alimentation du Québec, Québec, QC, Canada; 8South Western Ontario Veterinary Services, Stratford, ON, Canada; 
9Consultants Avi-Porc, Drummondville, QC, Canada; 10AQL Management Consulting, Edmonton, AB, Canada; 11FD Solutions, 
Winnipeg, MB, Canada

Objective
To improve swine farmers and veterinarians ability to manage 

disease

Introduction
On a day to day basis, farmers and their veterinarians deal with 

many diseases without the benefit of surveillance for early outbreak 
detection, or coordinated outbreak responses. Without this support, 
highly contagious pathogens such as Porcine Epidemic Diarrhea 
Virus (PEDv) can spread quickly and potentially cause significant 
harm. The purpose of this project was to develop a surveillance 
system to help Canadian swine farmers and veterinarians to deal more 
effectively with diseases

Methods
The project team developed some unique approaches to animal 

disease surveillance. They adopted a unique organizational structure 
in which the data and information providers (veterinarians and 
farmers) were also directly involved in the decision making process. 
They designed an infrastructure that integrated two components 1) a 
social network and 2) a data collection, analysis, event detection and 
reporting system

The social network or Swine Veterinary Network (SVN) includes 
veterinarians and swine specialists. The SVN consists of 3 regional: 
1) the Western provinces, 2) Ontario plus the Maritimes and 3)
Quebec; and one national network. Each network meets quarterly 
via the internet. One week prior to the meetings each veterinarian 
participating in the CSHIN is asked to fill out a web survey where 
they identify important, changing or emerging disease issues seen 
in their practice. The data is collated and presented at the meetings. 
The networks discuss important health issues; develop strategies for 
dealing with diseases and communicate this intelligence across the 
country.

The second component is a Practice Based Surveillance (PBS) 
network. It collects, analyses and reports syndromic data from 
veterinary practitioners in real time via the internet for early 
disease detection and to provide other health related information. 
Because swine farms are relatively large populations in themselves 
participating veterinarians report farm level data such as the 
prevalence of syndromes (coughing, diarrhea, neurological etc) within 
production groups (sows, boars, piglets, etc), as well as individual 
clinical and laboratory diagnosis

Both networks produce swine health intelligence that is delivered 
directly to swine farms by participating veterinarians and to other 
stakeholders through various communication networks. A governance 
model was developed that allows for control of data by data 
providers and regional and national decision making processes that 

include farmers, veterinarians, as well as industry and government 
representatives.

Results
Communication was greatly enhance by quarterly meetings and 

through quarterly regional and national disease updates. The CSHIN 
was the only national source for PEDv intelligence during the 
outbreak in Canada, providing daily electronic updates to industry 
subscribers across the country

The PBS detected a sudden regional increase in swine influenza 3 
weeks before it was identified by laboratory submissions. Streptcoccus 
suis a zoonotic pathogen has been identified as the most common 
clinical diagnosis on pig farms, providing valuable information to 
advocate for resources for disease control. Porcine Circovirus 2 was 
shown to be occurring on swine farms in spite of vaccine use, with 
improper vaccination being identified as the cause

Conclusions
The CSHIN infrastructure has been developed and the program 

rolled out across Canada. It has demonstrated that it can provide value 
to individual famers and the industry as a whole. Next steps are to 
secure long term funding

Keywords
Animal health surveillance; Syndromic surveillance; Social network; 
Alternative data source

Acknowledgments

The CSHIN was developed by the Canadian Swine Health Board with 
funding from Agriculture and Agri-food Canada

*John Berezowski

E-mail: john.berezowski@gmail.com    

Online Journal of Public Health Informatics * ISSN 1947-2579 * http://ojphi.org * (1):e8, 201