The overall objective is to construct a simulation model that will estimate production impact of disruption in swine marketing in Ontario and propose mitigation strategies that could minimize impact of such disruptions on swine populations and swine producers.
Such disruptions could occur due to various reasons such as outbreak of human disease among abattoir workers or due to border closures that occur due to hypothetical detection of reportable foreign animal disease in Canada.
In the latter situation, management of directly affected populations and populations under increased risk would fall under jurisdiction of appropriate federal and provincial agencies and organizations. Nonetheless, farms with no cases would be affected as well due to reduced capacity to process meat or to export pork. This would have negative effects on animal health and welfare and could have large negative impacts on individual producers and rural communities.
To determine possible impacts of these situations, a simulation model will be constructed that will mimic the swine production cycle at the provincial level and to contain sufficient stratification so that all of the above situations could be incorporated. Mitigation strategies will consist of strategies that can redistribute swine to different processing facilities or strategies that will interrupt swine production for a period of time. A number of scenarios will be created and evaluated in close collaboration with Ontario Pork.
