The funding bid for Stage Two of a pioneering pig health project has started to take shape. The Yorkshire and Humberside Health (YHH) project’s steering group, representing producers, vets and the allied trade, met on 17th November to draw up an outline of priorities to be considered for funding in Stage Two – the next major phase of the health initiative.

The steering group built on recent discussions among the local producer cluster groups that have begun to form. Plus, Professor Katharina Staerk of the Royal Veterinary College and Derek Armstrong of BPEX shared their first-hand experience of enzootic pneumonia (EP) elimination in Switzerland and a long-term project to get rid of PRRS in Minnesota.

These two examples confirmed that there can be no shortcuts for such initiatives – Yorkshire and Humberside Health is a long term project. And they also raised the question of having a specific focus for Stage Two. Swine dysentery stood out from the four diseases as a priority. But project activities in the early stages should not exclude work on reducing PRRS, EP and mange if they are more important for a specific cluster.

Biosecurity should be at the centre of all activity geared towards improving health, both at farm level and across the region with producers, hauliers, vets and farm suppliers all working together.

Katharina Staerk highlighted that, in Switzerland, good biosecurity was essential not only to eliminate EP in the first place but also to reduce the risk of re-introduction. There was a standard code of conduct for all hauliers, which was not policed but worked on trust and information-sharing. She stressed the importance of planning wagon routes as well as making use of physical barriers to disease transmission such as topography and vegetation – Katharina believed all this is relevant for the YHH initiative.

- partial de-population as well as full de-population (in Switzerland only partial de-population was required to clear up EP).

The next step is to submit a detailed application to Yorkshire Forward for funding. The project team is very hopeful that significant funding will be secured early next year. At which point it is likely that producer clusters will be invited to submit applications with specific plans to improve health on their farms. To qualify for any farm-level funding, producers will have to be part of a cluster, showing collaborative action. Individual farms will not be considered.

It is worth producers and vets starting to think about cluster plans and what they would like funding for now, so that they are in a good position to submit cluster