It pays to treat your herd has Porcine Epidemic Diarrhea (PED virus, says Karine Talbot of HyLife at La Broquerie, Man.
Biosecurity costs a lot of money. It takes a lot of work. And if you do it perfectly, the result isn’t even visible at first.
It’s no wonder it’s hard to convince people to do the right thing and follow biosecurity protocols – especially when they get “nothing tangible” in exchange, she said at the Allen D. Lehman swine Conference at St. Paul, Minnesota.
Biosecurity is made of 3 important components: Bioexclusion, Biocontainment and Biomanagement.
Bioexclusion is the most well-known and talked about; it is the external biosecurity. It is all the steps taken to prevent infectious diseases from entering the herd.
She defines biocontainment as all the steps taken to prevent infectious diseases from getting out of an infected barn and spreading to others.
Lastly, biomanagement is the internal biosecurity. It is all the steps taken to prevent (or minimize) infectious diseases from spreading from infected pigs to non-infected pigs within the same barn.
She said it’s time to change how we talk about biosecurity.
“We have to assume barns have disease even when we think they don’t,” Talbot said. “Biosecurity is more than just controlling what is coming into a herd – don’t forget what is coming out.”
Most of the conversation around biosecurity is centered on bioexclusion or preventing disease from entering the herd.
Although this is incredibly important, Talbot said when it comes to a disease like PED biosecurity requires a strong focus on all three components of biosecurity: bioexclusion, biocontainment and biomanagement.
“PED is a different beast when it comes to biosecurity; it is extremely infectious and contagious among pigs, and very little is needed to infect a naïve barn. If strong bioexclusion and biocontainment are not in place ahead of an outbreak, PED can spread like wildfire,” she said.
We need to spend more time talking about biomanagement and biocontainment in all types of operations, including sow, nursery and finishing, she said. •
— By Jim Romahn