Disruption of swine production and marketing in Ontario due to infectious diseases in swine and human populations: impact and mitigation strategies

The overall objective of the proposed project is to construct a simulation model that will estimate production impact of disruption in swine marketing in Ontario, and propose mitigation strategies that could minimize impact of such disruption on swine populations and swine producers. Such disruption could occur due to various reasons such as outbreak of human disease among abattoir workers, or due to border closure that occurs due to hypothetical detection of reportable foreign animal disease in Canada. In all of the latter situations, management of directly affected populations and populations under increased risk would fall under jurisdiction of appropriate federal and provincial agencies and organizations. Nonetheless, farms with no cases would be affected as well due to reduced capacity to process meat or to export pork. This would have negative effect of animal health and welfare and could have large negative impact on individual producers and rural communities. In order to determine possible impact of these situations, it is proposed to construct a simulation model that will mimic swine production cycle at the provincial level and to contain sufficient stratification so that all of the above situations could be incorporated.

Faculty Supervisor:

Zvonimir Poljak

Student:

Maggie Henry

Partner:

Ontario Pork

Discipline:

Medicine

Sector:

Agriculture

University:

University of Guelph