The General Manager of Manitoba Pork says a new initiative introduced in Manitoba to help contain PED will also help in the control of other infections, most notably PRRS.
The Manitoba Coordinated Disease Response initiative, modeled after a program developed in Ontario to respond to PRRS and applied to Porcine Epidemic Diarrhea, coordinates the sharing of information among producers at risk of exposure to PED.
Andrew Dickson, the General Manager of Manitoba Pork, expects the initiative be running at full speed within the next month.
Our hope is that, with this in place, we’ll be able to have a more formal way of sharing information on maps, what protocols are being used on biosecurity, what updates for biosecurity need to be done, what are people doing in terms of disease management and have a specific site that people can go to.
We’ll have a person attached to this program who can work with producers, talk to them about what’s going on, hear complaints, issues, problems, challenges and try to find solutions within the existing services that are being provided through veterinarians or service companies or from the provincial government, the federal government.
It’s been very successful in Ontario. They’ve built it up over time and when we look at the success rate they’ve had in terms of bringing down the incidence of PEDv in that province there’s no reason why we can’t repeat that in Manitoba.
It’ll be a great model to be used in terms of controlling this PRRS that seems to be doing the rounds in some operations and we need to get that under control. It’s a more virulent form and it affects all classes of stock and we don’t want that disease getting out of hand.
~ Andrew Dickson, Manitoba Pork
For more information email swinehealth@manitobapork.com or phone 204 235-2305.
