With winter here, cold temperatures and snow on the ground, the hog industry will watch with care and in some cases holding its collective breath to see if lessons learned and tighter, consistent biosecurity will hold the line against PEDv.
First off in Manitoba, Dr. Megan Bergman, Manitoba’s chief veterinary officer (CVO) says Manitoba hog farms infected with PEDv are making good progress in getting rid of the infection.
Manitoba has four swine farms confirmed with Porcine Epidemic Diarrhea infection with the first case diagnosed in mid-February in a nursery finisher farm in southeastern Manitoba, a full nine months after the first break outs in the United States.
Since then the CVO confirmed additional cases in another nursery finisher farm and in two sow barns.
Dr. Bergman says cleaning up positive sites is a very labor intensive process but the earlier sites are making very good progress as are the most recent ones and the hope is that they’ll be able to achieve negative status in the near future.
“Our producers at our positive sites are extremely diligent, working very closely with their private veterinarians to move forward to achieve negative status,” she says. “It’s a pretty intensive cleaning and disinfection process. We need to be very conscientious of the fact that everything from ventilation systems, dust in the barn and even outside of the barn can contain virus and so it has to be an extremely thorough process in removing all organic matter, getting rid of as much dust as possible and then a full clean wash and disinfection.”
Following, they usually try to do some environmental sampling to determine how successful that process to gain that sometimes elusive negative status.
Everyone needs to be very conscious of the fact manure pits often stay positive for quite some time, even after the cleaning and disinfection.
“We’re doing some studies to determine how long it will take for us to actually have negative manure pits in these sites,” added Bergman.
Dr. Bergman stresses bio-security is the best method for keeping this virus out of farms. The virus survives well in cold weather so producers need to be very vigilant in stopping anyone who doesn’t need to come onto the farm from coming onto the farm. Also ensuring those who need to come onto the site are following the protocols established by the farms and their veterinarians.
Paul Meers, a swine consultant in Stephenfield, MO says the key concerning PEDv is how fast it will spread and how virulent it will be once it gets cold in the United States.
“Will it affect herds that had PED v last December or effect pigs that first got hit in April and May in 2013,” said Meers. “Will they have enough immunity to hold it off and that will be the big question. If it runs rampant again and the immunity level is low, we can lose a lot more pigs this winter.”
He says, and this is a good thing, those with a PEDv breakout before have sharpened their pencils and biosecurity protocol, and those who have not had it, are scared to death and are sharpening their pencils and protocols too.  •
— By Harry Siemens