Dr. Blaine Tully, the President of the Canadian Association of Swine Veterinarians and a partner with Swine Health Professionals in Steinbach, MB said swine veterinarian in Manitoba have stepped up their focus on addressing a new, more virulent strain of Porcine Reproductive and Respiratory Syndrome.
A new more virulent strain of PRRS, a viral infection that affects pigs of all ages and stages of growth, has been identified in Manitoba.
Dr. Tully said genetic sequencing to determine whether it’s related to strains experienced in Manitoba or other parts of the country have shown that it’s a lone wolf.
“We have about 12 or 15 farms, the majority of which are in southeast Manitoba but we do know there are farms in the Interlake and out into central Manitoba that are infected,” he said. “The swine veterinary community has joined and dovetailing in with our PED response. We’re looking at doing a lot more epidemiological evaluation of farms infected with this new strain of PRRS, where located, how related the new strains are because once PRRS infects a pig and starts replicating the nature of the virus is to mutate each replication slightly and so we get variations within strain families. So we’re looking at relatedness of viruses by sites and trying to map out potential transmission routes or events.”
“It’s having like a very bad respiratory disease that really knocks you back, the animals get sick and they die,” said Andrew Dickson, GM of Manitoba Pork. “It affects the reproductive system of the sows. They lose baby pigs, and so on. Suckling’s difficult. The baby pigs are sickly. Even the heavier animals get sick.”
Dickson said PRRS had been around for 35 years in North America, while in Manitoba the pigs somehow got a lighter version of this disease for some reason, but this new virulent, one that’s come in from the US is quite bad, and it’s costly to clean it up. The production losses are higher than they are in PEDv.
“For example, in the United States, they are having to install things like filters on the fans, air intakes, to try and prevent the disease from spreading from one barn to the other, because it does move by air. There’s no question that PRRS moves by air,” he said. “The clean-up is harder. This disease tends to stick around, and it gets onto surfaces and stuff like that. It’s a very persistent disease. In fact, it’s one of the reasons why Iowa doesn’t have as many sows as it does because it’s so difficult to get rid of the disease.
The Manitoba swine industry has had it before, but a lighter version of it and gets a number of cases every year. It’s been around for a long time, but this has started in the last year or so, this new version.
Dr. Tully said pork producers and the veterinary community has moved to a heightened biosecurity awareness mode for many months due to PED and fortunately all of the safeguards in place to protect farms from PED apply to reducing the risk of introducing PRRS.
Well, the biosecurity protocols are the same, the two diseases are different and have completely different 
infectious agents.
Placing one final question for the Manitoba Pork general manager and how is this all affecting the expansion that the pork industry in Manitoba needs so badly?
In fact, Dickson went to a conditional use hearing that same evening in Elie, MB where a colony wishes to expand from 600 to a thousand sows farrow to finish.
“We haven’t had any complaints from anybody to date about their proposal,” he said. “The big thing is, you’ve got to get those plans right the first time. This colony has been around a long time in the area. It’s an existing operation, well established. This hearing is just the first step, they have to get through the permit planning process, and then the environmental stuff will all be done by sustainable development. That comes next.” •
— By Harry Siemens
