DES MOINES, Iowa — If you look at them, nothing seems new with these red rear lights for hog trailers.
Hidden inside is a big difference.
This light being launched here at the World Pork Expo today by Farm Health Guardian is a GPS unit that fires off data about the location and actions of a livestock trailer to its owner and the herd’s veterinarian.
More World Pork Expo coverage can be found here.
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“Right away there are breaches,” said Rob Hannam of Farm Health Guardian, which is based in Guelph, Ontario and Omaha, Nebraska.
“There are weaknesses in their biosecurity program that they didn’t even know about.” The tracker lets the vet know if a truck has taken a wrong turn and driven past a PED-infected farm, or backed up into an unclean part of a barn or slaughterhouse without reporting it.
Hannam said that many biosecurity breaches were never being spotted because drivers didn’t think much about them, and they didn’t seem like a big deal. But any contact with possibly-infected territory needs to be known by biosecurity managers on farms, so this simple brake light can fulfill that role.
The World Pork Expo is the hog industry’s biggest event of the year, bringing in thousands of farmers, service providers, manufacturers, and others. It’s a high visibility location from which to
launch a new product, which is why Farm Health Guardian brought forward this new device today.
Manitoba has announced a goal of eliminating PED from the province, something Hannam thinks is a “perfect fit to help integrators and producers eliminate PED and other diseases.”
Many other Canadian-based machinery and technology companies are here. Canada’s heavyweight breeding companies are here. This is an industry with major Canadian content.
Recognizing that reality, Canada’s Agriculture Minister, Lawrence MacAulay, is holding a Thursday night reception at the World Food Prize building in downtown Des Moines, which Iowa’s governor is scheduled to attend.
Contact ed.white@producer.com
