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World Pork Expo 2021

The World Pork Expo is a major event for hog producers, hosted in the largest pork producing state: Iowa.  The 33rd expo was back in action last week after the 31st Expo canceled because of African Swine Fever concerns and the 32nd canceled because of the pandemic.

The National Pork Producers Council say it was ready to get it together again. “We didn’t know what to expect, but it’s very obvious the industry wanted to get back together, producers came from all over the country, vendors came from all over the country, and we had a good turnout,” said Neil Dierks with the Council.

  There was a top issue on everyone’s mind: biosecurity – and not just because of the pandemic. Hog diseases are dangerous so producers have experience with biosecurity. It’s one of the reasons hog confinements are so popular. Many producers have filtered barns which are airtight with protocols for showering in and out.

“But we’re very serious about having good biosecurity, just as producers are practicing biosecurity and we took other issues, for instance there were no feed samples allowed to be sent home with anyone,” says Dierks.

  It was also a chance for companies to visit the show and market their products. Clipper is a distributor working with Intervention Disinfectant, a way for producers and other businesses to protect their hogs. “You don’t just spray a pathogen, spray a virus, spray a bacteria and you kill it, it takes a contact time. Most products are asking for 10 minute contact time. Well how do you get that on a vertical surface? You foam,” says Steve Sewell with Clipper.

  And the World Pork Expo isn’t a place to just talk about a solution, you can show it off too. “In fact many of the farms and truck washes we’ve dealt with they’ve seen productivity improvements by their staff as much as 20 or 25 percent. And the reason for that is it takes so little product to actually cover a surface. When you put it on that tin, what you see is how that foam has hang time I referred to earlier. You see the foam hanging on the wall giving you the contact time you need in order to go ahead and kill those pathogens,” Sewell said.

He also says it’s easy to overuse disinfectants, so foam helps with that. Intervention also breaks down into water and oxygen taking the environment into account. “You also have to worry about your employees, this product is the only category four disinfectant on the market, so no PPE requirement.”

  Another focus of biosecurity is information. Right now it’s hard to know where animals are, how they move and where they got their feed. The Pork Checkoff realized a need to have good data sharing services across the states and created AgView.

  Dr Dave Pyburn is the Chief Veterinarian at the National Pork Board. He says good information is critical to respond to outbreaks. “That allows producers to put their movement data, their premises data, their biosecurity data from a secure pork supply documentation as well as their diagnostic data as it relates to foreign animal disease. They can put all of this up in the data system; it’s all secure only to them until there’s a need, which would be a foreign animal disease response.”

  So if a state vet has a need for more information or there’s an investigation into a foreign animal disease, those groups can request the data. The info is owned by a farmer, so they would have to okay it, but if they say yes it can easily go to the state dashboard. “And they can use that information to make smarter decisions about that foreign animal disease response. It all leads to quicker containment and quicker eradication, hopefully, of a foreign animal disease.”

  Any producer can sign up at www.porkcheckoff.org/ agview.