The Porcine Epidemic Diarrhea outbreak spread throughout swine operations in southeastern Manitoba and two more west of the Red River, Altona and Lowe Farm since the end of April appears to be on the decline.

“We have 60 sites infected since the spring. Regarding capacity, we have 66,000 sow places, nursing barn

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263,000 places, and infected barns. There are 143,000 finishing barn places potentially infected,” said Manitoba Pork general manager Andrew Dickson on July 26, 2017. “I base that on the total capacity of a site. In some cases we had, I’d say, three barns on a site. Maybe only two of the barns are infected, and one is okay, but I don’t have that. What I’ve given you here are the total numbers.”

Dickson said the latest cases are as a result of movement of animals, infected pigs, so these aren’t surprising ones. Looking at it maybe optimistically there wasn’t an unknown outbreak for 12 days. In a sense, it’s not a complete surprise like why would they have gotten it?

“It’s different when you move pigs from an infected site to a fresh place because you know the pigs have got the disease, but you need the room in the original barn,” he said.

While the first bigger concentration outbreaks centered in southeastern Manitoba, the two latest sites are outside that area, west of the Red River, one in Altona and the other near Lowe Farm, MB.

“That’s unfortunate. The pigs came from southeast Manitoba; it’s not as though this is an infection that we didn’t know where it came from, and it’s in a brand new part of the province,” Dickson said. “It’s created a lot of disruption in how we normally do business, and so there are all kinds of contingency plans put in place regarding the movement of animals. We’re not making the most efficient use of our resources, but we’re trying to do the best we can.”

While production will drop a little during the recovering process, the two larger processing plants, Maple Leaf Foods at Brandon and HyLife Foods at Niverville, they’re holding their own. The processors are locating additional supplies from elsewhere to make sure that their plants keep running efficiently.

Regarding getting those original barns infected dating back to May 2, Dickson said with certain cautionary notes about where that production is going and how producers are housing it is a real balancing act. Their goal with newborn piglets infected they tend to move them from an infected nursery to an infected finisher barn to try and minimize the potential of affecting a new one.

“How do you balance the capacity of the barns that are infected as cases arise? It takes a lot of collaborative effort,” Dickson said. “What do you do about the manure from these barns? It’s potentially got the disease in it.”

The industry is collaborating where the main players involved in this have dedicated crews to look after the PEDv barns so that they don’t infect or potentially infect sites that don’t have the disease.

“This is huge. We’re talking about a lot of equipment, a lot of crews, but they’re going to service everybody, not just their barns, but they’re going to do everybody else’s, too,” he said. “In other words, they will also look after the smaller guy who doesn’t have the equipment, a very positive note.”

Dickson said it came about by industry talking to industry. The main players talk amongst themselves and encouraging them to make this collaborative effort.

“The sad thing is, there’s enough volume now, it makes it worthwhile to dedicate crews to this work. It’s an unfortunate consequence; you know what I mean,” said Dickson. •

— By Harry Siemens