IARN — The Iowa Pork Producers Association held its annual in-person meeting on Tuesday.
Meeting at the Community Choice Credit Union Convention Center in Des Moines, delegates held discussions on financial reports, bylaws, committee activity, a pork checkoff update, and several other topics related to the industry.
IPPA Past President Mike Paustian says the delegates debated a few resolutions at the meeting. The first of which dealt with the use of Premises IDs to help track the movement of pigs between sites.
“Pretty much all pork producers in Iowa have gotten Premises IDs for their barn sites,” Paustian said. “This resolution was encouraging producers to keep track when animals move from one premise to another to keep a record of those Premises IDs so that in the event of a disease outbreak, producers would be able to quickly get that information to the state veterinarian.”
Paustian says another debated resolution asked producers to support a pilot project called the US Swine Health Improvement Project, which is modeled after a program the poultry industry has successfully had for many years.
“That would look to set up some universally accepted standards for how much testing you need to do in an area to prove that disease is not present, what kind of tests would be allowed, and things like that,” Paustian said. “It would be a chance for producers to be at the table working with state and federal government to maybe hammer some of these things out ahead of time before they might be needed in the event of a disease outbreak.”
Paustian noted that his one-year term as IPPA President expired at the meeting Tuesday, which transitioned him to the Past President role on the IPPA Board of Directors. The new IPPA President is Essex farmer Dennis Liljedahl.
Story courtesy of the Iowa Agribusiness Radio Network
