Tools that the hog industry is using in Manitoba appear to be helping bring the spread of PED virus in the province under control.

On Thursday, July 27 Manitoba Pork hosted a PED information session in Steinbach, MB to update producers on the situation.

George Matheson, the Chair of Manitoba Pork, says there have been no new cases since July 14.

“We’re organizing a manure management group for the infected farms. Of course, equipment can become infected and we don’t want a positive farm infecting a negative farm just by the transfer of manure equipment and spreading must be done soon,” said Matheson. “Lagoons get full.

That’s one approach we’re taking. Manitoba Pork has decided to employ a Swine Health Officer, a full-time position, just to manage the situation with the help of the Manitoba CVO.”

He said three staff members, Mark Fynn, Arne Thorlacius, and our GM Andrew Dickson have worked very hard in the last three months trying to get control of the situation. Also, a vaccine developed by VIDO out in Saskatchewan will be used on a trial basis. It won’t prevent it but it will reduce the symptoms and make things more manageable for an infected farm.

Still, biosecurity protocols and clean-up are the keys to gaining control of the PED virus outbreak that has spread across the Red River into several barns, one near Altona and the other one near Lowe Farm, MB.

Dr. Egan Brockhoff, the Veterinary Council of the Canadian Pork Council said there’s a great group of people working together in a cooperative way to help control and manage this outbreak. Certainly, the province of Manitoba is providing a lot of support, while Manitoba Pork is taking a strong leadership role in helping everyone move forward with PED control and awareness. The veterinary community in Manitoba and across Canada is lending us much support as they can to the veterinarians and to the efforts made by producers and industry to control the virus.

“We’ve got experts really working from coast to coast, but specifically working very hard in Manitoba with producers to control the virus, and it’s great to see the producer groups come together, individual producers to really work on efforts to control and eliminate if we can,” said Dr. Brockhoff.

What level of confidence is there at this stage and the ability of the industry to contain the infection and ultimately eradicate it, and what are the factors there?

He said there’s no question about the level of frustration as the virus continued to spread. There’s just so much virus in the environment now that even the smallest little mistake with bio-security is turning herds positive.

“There’s no question though that we have the capacity to contain the virus and ultimately, again, move towards reducing the number of positive sites and ultimately eliminating the virus from our landscape,” said Dr. Brockhoff. “We must look at those core values within biosecurity, so how do we contain the virus within our different buffer areas, how do we contain the virus on certain farms, and how do we exclude virus from entering new sites. The core area focus must be on managing immunity, building up immunity as quickly as we can in the affected sites. Reducing shedding as aggressively as possible, coordinating our biosecurity efforts to contain the virus and coordinating our biosecurity efforts to exclude the virus from new sites.”

What risk does the Manitoba situation, the south eastern Manitoba situation pose to the rest of Manitoba and to neighbouring provinces?

He said there’s no question that there’s a lot of virus circulating throughout southern Manitoba right now putting a lot of farms at risk in southern Manitoba. There are hundreds of farms still within the regions affected that remain negative, and certainly, they are at a very high risk of becoming affected by the virus.

“Without question, if we look towards the Saskatchewan and Alberta and British Columbia, the risk grows every day that the virus will move from southern Manitoba into the pork industries in the three provinces to the west. Efforts aren’t just going on in southern Manitoba to contain the virus but a significant effort has been put into efforts to exclude the virus from the other provinces as well.” •

— By Harry Siemens Pictures courtesy of Dr. Brockhoff