The PED virus strikes twice within one week in Manitoba, other provinces stand up and take notice tightening their own biosecurity protocols making sure it doesn’t strike in their backyards and rightfully so. The disease outbreak while only in ten barns so far in Manitoba causes stress and devastation to those hit, and stress for those in a radius of the one barn that has it.
Dr. Betty Althouse, Saskatchewan’s Chief Veterinary Officer says pork producers in Saskatchewan must step up their vigilance in response to the latest reports of Porcine Epidemic Diarrhea in Manitoba.
Three new on-farm cases of PED virus in Manitoba in May and then two more confirmed from Sept 14 to Sept 21 by the Office of Manitoba’s Chief Veterinary Officer including a sow operation and a finisher site in south-eastern Manitoba, both within five km of each other. So far, that doesn’t mean the two cases come from one another because no linkage has so far been found, except the geographical location.
Dr. Althouse says trucks and trailers that do contact slaughter plants or assembly yards in Manitoba may become contaminated with PED and everyone concerned should take extra efforts to make sure they are well cleaned and disinfected before they contact a Saskatchewan facility.
“We’re much more comfortable when the whole of the west is PED free,” she said. “It’s a very integrated industry across the west, especially on the Prairies. There’s a lot of movement of pigs and people and transports between Manitoba and Saskatchewan. Pigs go to slaughter in Manitoba at your federal plants there, all the cull sows pretty much from Saskatchewan move through Manitoba on their way to the U.S. so we do have a lot of animals move that way.
Certainly, some weanlings move into Saskatchewan as well so the movement is occurring and, with the pig movement and the trailer movement, basically any movement of manure, there is a risk of picking up and spreading PED.”
Dr. Althouse says any time there is PED in the neighbouring province, it does pose an increased risk so that’s why the heightened alert from her office. “We sent a notice through both the Ministry and Sask Pork to producers just highlighting that the cases were there and to heighten that level of alert and be sure that cleaning and disinfection of trailers continues to be a high priority,” she said. “The increased surveillance and heightened biosecurity in Saskatchewan have been successful and there have still been no clinical cases of Porcine Epidemic Diarrhea detected in Saskatchewan.”
As is so often the case, when the crisis hits, others also stand up and take notice doing everything to find some new and better biosecurity that will diminish the chance of this crisis happening again. In the same vein, research conducted by VIDO-InterVac shows the use of heat has the potential to dramatically improve the cleaning and disinfection of swine transport vehicles.
In partnership with Swine Innovation Porc scientists with the University of Saskatchewan, the Prairie Agricultural Machinery Institute, VIDO-InterVac and the Prairie Swine Centre are in the process of developing an automated system for washing and disinfecting of swine transport vehicles to reduce the transmission of infections.
Dr. Volker Gerdts, the Associate Director Research with VIDO-InterVac says their role is to determine at what temperatures the most common swine pathogens will be inactivated and how long it will take. Dr. Gerdts says researchers are focusing on the 12 most important pathogens of concern to the industry.
“The first thing we’re doing right now in the lab is to essentially just determine after how many minutes, at what temperature these pathogens are inactivated,” he said. “For each of these pathogens we’re running a matrix which has various time points, like from one minute to two hours and then the various degrees and we’re showing at what temperature each of these pathogens is being inactivated in the lab. Heat, in general, is very effective in inactivating pathogens.”
Gerdts thinks what their research is telling them is the temperatures they have to reach and for how long. That’s really then the challenge for the engineers involved in this project, to develop the engineering part, the mechanical part. Is it possible to heat up a truck or parts of a truck to a certain temperature or what methods can be used to reach that temperature under practical conditions? Dr. Gerdts says phase two will be to test these pathogens in the lab in an environment like you would see on a trailer and the third phase will be to repeat the tests in the environment.
He hopes to have the lab work completed by the end of the year. •
— By Harry Siemens
