Good Production Practices: Working with your Vet

The Pork Board is part of a checkoff program which works with packers, consumers, and hog farmers to figure out the best way to care for the pigs, and provide resources to the growers.  Animal agriculture is in an interesting place because we have to look out for the animals with veterinary supervision, meet the demands of our direct customers- the meat packing companies,- and give the end consumer the products they desire; preferably while generating enough revenue to pay our employees and give us room to grow.  In an ideal world, all of these would align perfectly, and achieving balance would be easy.  Since nothing is every perfect, it's a challenge to find a set of standards that will suit all the different customers.

For this reason, the Pork Board has worked to make a list of 10 "Good Production Practices."  These practices are part of industry wide training, and are part of our auditing processes.  They are written into our Standard Operating Procedures, and are practices fully backed by our vets.  They have input from our buyers, who are influenced by their buyers.  It's a bit clunky, and a bit slow to react, but it is the system we have in place now that draws the line on what's acceptable, and what's not.

The first practice is to have a good relationship with your vet.  This relationship isn't just a once in awhile office visit, but much more hands on.  Almost on a daily basis someone on the farm is contacting one of our vets.  On my farm, we have two.  One lives just minutes from the farm, and he is our local large animal vet.  He visits with us regularly, and makes suggestions on what he sees.  He works closely with our swine vet who travels to see us a few times a year, but makes most of our major protocol changes.  Both vets work together on every decision we make when it comes to animal care.

These vets also update us on information pertaining to medical withdrawals.  They make sure we know if information on the products we use to treat sick pigs changes, so we don't use the products against their recommendations.  They make sure that anything we give to treat or prevent sickness makes sense, and is actually working.  They also make recommendations on how to avoid sickness by implementing better cleaning practices, and proactively improving our herd's immunity.  Any treatment we use is very expensive, so anything we can do to avoid having to treat pigs is worth it.

(Grandpa and I- Founder and 3rd Generation)

Over the years, the way we farm has changed, and so has the way we evaluate things on the farm.  What hasn't changed is our commitment to growing a safe food supply.