International livestock veterinarian consultant and lecturer Dr. John Carr said recently, “at the moment, I have two major issues on the planet. We’ve got to fix Manitoba’s PED outbreak. I don’t know; we seem to almost to get there and then not quite enough. This is quite frustrating.”
In speaking candidly from the Manila airport, John said the second issue is African Swine Fever, and he seems to be spending most of his time on that one.
When you ask him in which country he feeds pigs, a pat answer is in which one don’t I. Dr. Carr has as good a handle on the ASF in China as anyone may claim to have because he is responsible for the health of at least 150,000 sows and their offspring.
While waiting to catch a flight back to the UK, he’d spent four or five days with the pig industry in the Philippians where they are still free of ASF. How long is hard to say. John is also responsible for the health of various hog operations in Canada, and therefore, his concern rests with the continuous outbreak of the PED virus in Manitoba.
“You know, in some respects, I don’t want the PED to be a lesson regarding ASF, but some of the same principles apply. The advantage of ASF is, it doesn’t move through the air, but I’m convinced PED moves through the air. I haven’t finished all my analysis, of course; But one of the problems I have is, I still think the state, Chief Veterinary Office (CVO] is not making a big enough exclusion zone.”
He said the exclusion zone’s too small when a facility, barn, or farm break re PED virus. When they do their maps, they make it with circles around the farms; he makes bigger circles around the farms. Carr hasn’t looked at this latest outbreak, but the one a year and a half ago, all of the new outbreaks, were all within his zone and no surprise to him. They were well within his experience, expected zone of infection. But they were outside of the province’s expected zone.
“See, I give it a 10-mile radius, at least, around farms. In my experience, particularly with the wind blowing in one direction, a virus can move a long way. And 10 miles is not very far when the wind’s blowing 50 kilometres an hour, the stuff’s there in 5, 10 minutes. And people tend to ignore the weather more than I think they should.”
Dr. Carr has another concern.
“People are now trying to grow out some of these pigs, and I’m not entirely sure if that’s a way to tackle the problem. It seems that people have got almost punch drunk getting used to it, and that’s what frightens me. They get used to two or three cases, and then it’ll get to 20, and they’ll panic. And then it’ll get back down to two or three; they’ll not get it to zero,” he said. “But again, no disrespect to the government, but we should know that the cases are all related. I could do an RNA analysis and know where it came from. I should very quickly be able to tell whether it’s the United States or Canada. I should see if it’s origin is from Ontario or Manitoba. I probably should know if it’s the same strain or something new. And in truth, I should know whether it’s your farm versus Joe’s farm. Now I appreciate the government sometimes doesn’t want me to know all of that detail, but they know it. If they don’t know, they should know.”
Dr. Carr said they should know where this is coming from, and he finds there’s a wall of silence which is unpleasant.
Another observation, “I’ll tell you, it doesn’t move by people. Not really. I mean, not if you wash, change your clothes, change your boots, wash your hands, soak or shower. I wouldn’t be able to do my job. If people easily transmitted all these diseases, there would be a wake of diseases behind me.”
Dr. Carr said the industry needs to make some hard decisions.
“To my mind, each farm needs an eradication plan. Total PED eradication, not pigs,” he said. “I don’t mean to depopulate for PED, I think I can control PED, but I need a formal plan for each one of those farms carried through to completion. And if you don’t want to go along with this, then they should be made to depopulate.”
He believes strongly Canada needs to make the PED virus a notifiable disease.
“The difference in England, we made PED a notifiable disease, and I was instrumental in achieving that goal. Because in Canada, it’s not, I only have to advise people that I have the problem. But in England, we made PED a notifiable disease.
It means that, as a practiced veterinarian, I must report this. I don’t even have to have confirmation, and I need to have some signs.
The sad part in all of this said John, PED virus in Manitoba is a considerable distraction.
“We need to take a really good shake at the whole industry and just say, ‘Boys, this is not good enough.’ To my mind, we need to be concentrating on feeding China and not being distracted by PED.” •
— By Harry Siemens