Alberta’s vigilance over biosecurity has protected its pork market, but producers and transporters still can’t let their guard down.
When porcine epidemic diarrhea (PED) hit Canada last year, most of the cases occurred in Ontario, with a few in Quebec, Manitoba and PEI. But it has yet to spread across the Alberta boundary.
“It’s really you guys that have done it,” Egan Brockhoff told a group of producers at the Alberta Pork regional meeting in Red Deer in May.
The Red Deer veterinarian with Prairie Swine Health Services contacted Alberta Pork in 2013, not long after PED hit the U.S., to start planning biosecurity education and monitoring plans.
“I had worked with PED in Asia, so I knew how horrible this disease was,” he said.
Many plans were already in place, but needed to be activated as the potential had become real. Brockhoff wrote the PED monitoring program last fall, and Alberta Pork “jumped on it and Alberta Agriculture jumped on it,” he said.
Alberta Pork’s PED project began sampling high-traffic areas like trailers and yards, processing plants, wash stations or assembly yards. So far the province has remained uninfected, but tests did find PED in an office that would have been brought in on a boot.
“Biosecurity has been one of the biggest reasons we’ve kept it out, but there’s still room to close some of the loopholes,” he said. “There have been some big lessons learned.”
Transportation and people are the two big risk factors that need more attention. Brockhoff said he still sees workers going outside to check bins and not changing their boots, or running a load-out and jumping on the ground to help lift a ramp.
“We do little things that increase the risk. The back of a loading ramp is a great place for stuff to come off that trailer.”
Aside from the odd moment of carelessness, there are awareness issues as well. Brockhoff recently talked to a producer who was planning to install cost-saving LED lights in his barn. The lights were being imported at a great cost saving from China.
“I was just like stabbed in the heart,” he said. “All of the PED and swine delta corona virus strains that we have in North America came from China.”
Producers also need to be vigilant about the work of others. Clean, he pointed out, doesn’t always mean properly clean. He showed examples of tests run on trailers that were allegedly washed and disinfected, ready to go to a farm. A quick visual inspection showed no issues, but swab tests of the trailer floor showed significant organic material left behind in one of the trailers.
“We need to be auditing these (washes),” he said.
All the planning by Alberta Pork and Alberta Agriculture ultimately requires the co-operation of producers, transporters and other related industries. Some truck washes have agreed to be monitored, but not all. It’s up to producers to call and ask questions about their disinfection process and how they clean their facility, and to be ready to send away a trailer that doesn’t meet their own inspection.
Saskatchewan’s monitoring program recently found a clean trailer that was being hauled by an infected tractor unit, which was positive for PED on the floor mats. Saskatchewan also caught an infected trailer in March that had come from the U.S. but travelled through Alberta.
“The virus is just right there at our doorstep all the time.”
Our vigilant Saskatchewan neighbours also found feed that tested positive for swine delta corona virus. Quebec, Brockhoff noted, has found PED virus in feed. Porcine plasma, which can be used as a protein supplement, can carry a virus. And feed is how the epidemic started in Ontario.
Canada has successfully eliminated PED in over half the barns where it’s been detected, but the industry doesn’t dare give PED a better foothold. In the U.S., two strains of PED and SDCV hit at the same time, resulting in the loss of about eight million pigs and problems in all the 34 major hog-producing states.
The U.S. has been battling back with some degree of success, using second-generation vaccines, but it is a long battle. If prevention ever fails, Alberta will need to react swiftly to isolate and control any outbreaks.
That’s the value of the federal and regional swine health intelligence networks. Brockhoff asked producers to encourage their vets to contribute information to the Western Canadian Swine Health Intelligence Network, which will then add the information to the national database.
The reports don’t single out anyone’s farm, he said; they just help monitor any diseases the vets observe. Keeping track of diseases that occur anywhere help build regional or national strategies to respond to outbreaks.
The silver lining from this dark cloud is that now producers and transporters are better educated about biosecurity, and programs are in place to keep Alberta’s pork industry safer in the long term. It’s already prepared for the next big thing.
“We’ve already started keeping out a lot of the worst viruses out there,” Brockhoff said.  •
— By Carl Haun