AHDB’s Pig Health Scheme coming back after covid interruption

The Agriculture and Horticulture Development Board’s popular Pig Health Scheme will come back in the autumn time with an improved comparative element, subsequent to interruption as a result of covid-19.
The free to join scheme involves appraisers assessing English pigs right before they are killed. This is for the purpose of checking for the proportion and seriousness of 12problems which allows farmers and vets to monitor the health of the livestock as a collective, with this information being utilised to advise what needs to change in order to keep disease levels to a minimum.
The projects’ relaunch comes after the postponement of all pig evaluations in March 2020 because of the rising pressures both producers and appraisers were experiencing.
AHDB animal health scientist Lauren Turner, said “The industry put a huge effort into navigating the early stages of the pandemic and coping under extreme strain. But we know from talking to producers just how many are keen to start receiving herd health data once more.”.
“We are fortunate that 10 of our existing assessors are now available and ready to kickstart the scheme once they have received their refresher training. To bolster numbers, we also have a group of seven new assessors who will undergo the full training provided by VetScore.”
The AHDB has been working behind the scenes during the 18 month hiatus to develop and release a new comparative feature which will allow pig farmers and vets to understand where the herd sits comparatively to the national herd.