Goat biosecurity standard focuses on six areas

Monday, April 1, 2013

by BETTER FARMING STAFF

The national biosecurity standard for Canadian goat farms, released last week by the Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA), is the result of a collaboration that included input from Ontario Goat.

Jennifer Haley, executive director of Ontario Goat, said they worked closely with the CFIA on the project. “Ontario Goat was very much involved in the development of this standard,” she said.

While Haley doesn’t know how many of her members will adopt the biosecurity measures, she said, “The thing with the goat industry is they haven’t had a lot of resources so they are very eager for new things that can help them reduce costs.”

According to a CFIA news release, the standard focuses on six areas to “minimize the risk of disease transmission on farm.” The areas are: sourcing and introducing animals; animal health; facility management; movement of people, vehicles and equipment; monitoring and record keeping; and communications and training.”

Haley said her organization is preparing to mail out copies of the standard “to any of our licensed milk shippers and anybody else that we have contact information for . . . If we don’t know about them, we can’t get the standard to them but we will do our best to make sure that producers here in Ontario have a copy of it.”

Ontario Goat is part of the Ontario Livestock Alliance, a partnership between Ontario Veal, Ontario Goat and Ontario Rabbit. BF