No matter what the season Manitoba Pork continues to confirm cases of PEDv. Recent cases serve as a warning to always keep biosecurity practices top of mind on farms.

Manitoba Pork says, “Each producer should develop biosecurity protocols in consultation with your veterinarian, considering all aspects of your operation, and shared and regularly reviewed with your staff and visitors to your farm. Biosecurity remains the best defence against PED and other pathogens that could affect your herd.”

Earlier MPC confirmed another case of PEDv in a finisher barn in southeastern Manitoba on December 17. Full biocontainment is in place on site. Of the 14 other affected premises from 2018, six have achieved Presumptive Negative status, four have reached Transitional and four remain Positive.

Enter the Novi-Comp by Novid Inc. of Rosenort, MB a composting system designed for livestock facilities including hog, poultry, slaughterhouses, and fisheries but owners of waste facilities, such as universities, schools and farmer’s markets, can also use it.

Nova-Comp’s design addresses the growing concern surrounding the safe and economical disposal of livestock mortality and organic waste. Composting goes back a long way, but in-vessel composting is something that came into existence in the early 2000s.

“The Novi-Comp is a key component in bio-security. It’s a safe, eco-friendly method of deadstock disposal and it all happens on the farm, so there is no risk of cross-contamination from truck traffic,” said Shawn Compton Director of Business Development, Livestock Composting Division Novid Inc. of Rosenort, MB. “The Novi-Comp process kills most pathogens associated with livestock mortalities.”

At the recent Prairie Livestock Expo, Compton who years ago owned a company that built the Biovator, a similar product said this is an improvement.

“It’s an improvement on old technology,” he said. “I’ve associated myself with Ryan Plett the owner of Novid, manufacturers of stainless steel products for 25 years. We took a proven technology and made it better. It’s modular and as your operations expand you can add to it. In-vessel composting is an economical environmentally friendly method of disposing of dead stock.”

Compton said any livestock producer, whether big integrators including hogs, poultry, and even slaughterhouse waste, some fisheries, anything organic that will compost. The Forks market uses one in Winnipeg, MB and even some school divisions that use it for cafeteria waste. “Composting is a combination of carbon and nitrogen a natural biological process. Your carbon comes from wood shavings or a similar product. Your nitrogen comes from your dead stock, your animals. You mix them 1-to-1 on a volume basis so that you would load them in the loading zone, and the machine will rotate off and on throughout the day. And the natural microbes turn it into compost in 7-10 days. It’s pretty amazing,” he said.

When the Biovator first came on the scene in the 1980’s operators had to be careful of where and how they disposed of the finished product.

Compton said today people understand the technology and the science. It’s a pathogen-free product coming out of the end for stockpiling, and the Novi-Comp continues composting and for spreading on the land.

“It’s safe, environmentally friendly. You’re not putting dead stock in landfills. You’re not burying them for groundwater contamination,” he said. “Many of the integrators looking at systems like this are doing so for disease pressure reasons. They don’t want truck traffic coming back and forth picking up dead stock.”

The Novi-Comp has an inner stainless steel drum welded together with two inches of polyurethane film insulation sprayed on, then wrapped with a stainless steel shell to retain heat. It will rotate six to twelve times each day on a 15-to-20 minute cycle per rotation. Aeration occurs naturally through discharge using the vented lids. This means there’s no need for additional mechanization, temperatures in the Nova-Comp run from 55 to 65 degrees Celsius or 130 to 150 degrees Fahrenheit. These temperatures neutralize the pathogens commonly associated with livestock production.

“It takes the composting process and controls the environment. Bunker composting, where you have concrete bunkers, and you layer your animals in wood shavings or a carbon source, could take a month or two for the animals to completely break down,” he said. “And you have to physically open the piles, and move them from bunker to bunker. With in-vessel composting, and the Nova Com, it controls the environment, so it takes that process down to a 7-10 day window.”

And there are no permits the end-user requires.

“We’ve done all the testing on the compost systems themselves, on the end product, so we have all that data to back up the producers. You can purchase one today and install it tomorrow, no problem,” said Compton.

Ryan Plett is the president of Novid primarily a stainless steel manufacturing company in Rosenort, MB making stainless steel fertilizer storage and containment tanks for over 30 years that builds the Novi-Comp. •

— By Harry Siemens