When the PED virus first hit the United States, the hog industry in Canada knew it would just be a matter of time until it reared its ugly head in Canada. Then it happened first in Ontario and then in Manitoba. However, with a great defence that turned into offence, it appeared that Manitoba drew the line of defence and it really never crossed that line, except at some distribution points.
Late in 2016, Dr. Egan Brockhoff, the Veterinary Counsel with the Canadian Pork Council reported the Canadian pork industry is doing a fantastic job in its effort to rid the country of Porcine Epidemic Diarrhea, PEDv.
The Canadian Swine Health Intelligence Network’s mid-December PED update says the Manitoba operations affected by PEDv in May and September are making excellent progress in moving toward eradicating the virus.
Brockhoff says Canada is doing a fantastic job keeping this virus down and working really hard to push it out of the country.
“The three herds that were positive in May, the finisher sites are presumptive negative. The animals are testing negative and we’ve got negative and naive animals back in those sites,” he says. “The sow herd that was positive in the fall has stopped shedding the virus and the pig environment, where the little guys are all running around, is testing negative and so they’re able to farrow pigs into that negative environment and animal health is continuing to improve. We’ve had more cases in 2016 but we continue to see a positive downtrend in the number of affected sites across Canada. B.C., Alberta and Saskatchewan remain negative for the virus.”
Brockhoff says Manitoba is doing a great job getting the positive sites negative, while Ontario has done a really good job moving their positive sites to negative and less than 4 percent of the primary sites positive in Ontario remain positive and Quebec is testing negative. The positive herd in the Maritimes all tests negative now and those pigs have resumed normal market behavior.
Dr. Brockhoff says it’s always more complicated to remove virus from a farrow to finish site versus the finish barns where it’s fairly easy to eradicate the virus in the populations of more mature animals Getting Manitoba-specific viewpoint George Matheson, chair of Manitoba Pork says improving biosecurity will be among the pork industry’s top priorities during 2017.
In May the Canadian Food Inspection Agency reinstated a regulation that requires swine transport trailers returning from U.S. farms to be washed in the United States before re-entering Canada.
Matheson says biosecurity is always important focusing on reducing the transfer of any diseases amongst Manitoba herds, particularly PED devastating, especially for the individual farms hit with this dreadful disease.
“We did have a few cases in Manitoba this year but the specific farms either are negative or moving toward being negative so that’s good news for us,” he says. “We continue to focus on prevention. Something we’re looking at in cooperation with the federal government and CFIA would be a trusted trucker program where a transporter who has perhaps been certified through a course in biosecurity can have their trailer pass the border with a scrape-out and, because of their history of biosecurity, they can then move to the wash station at Blumenort where it would be thoroughly washed and baked to reduce all bacteria and virus.”
Matheson says it would be like a NEXUS program for those people going to the airport. If the passenger has a good history, is a good citizen, then he or she can bypass some of the restrictions placed when travelling.
“Such a program would allow these trailers to be scraped out in the U.S. and then thoroughly washed, disinfected and baked in Canada,” he says.
This would eliminate the dubious role of washing in some bay in the U.S. that in some cases are known for using recycled water – water used to wash other trucks, not deemed a safe venture at all. •
— By Harry Siemens
