Manitoba Pork reports the effort to rid the province of Porcine Epidemic Diarrhea continues to make progress.
Pork producers on hand last week for Manitoba Pork’s Fall Producer Meetings in Niverville and Portage La Prairie were updated on the effort eradicate PED.
Jenelle Hamblin, the Manager of Swine Health Programs with Manitoba Pork, says the cleanup is coming along well.
In 2018 we had 14 cases of PED confirmed, again all in that southeast part of Manitoba. Currently we’re sitting at five of those sites that have reached presumptive negative status, meaning their animals and all of their animal contact sites have been tested and confirmed negative for the virus, with the exception of the manure storage – the manure may still have live virus present.
There’s five sites that have reached the transitional status so they’ve done the clean up and they’re currently in the process of doing their testing to reach that presumptive negative status, which is really great. Four of the sites still remain in that positive status, those of which that broke later in the year, in that September range that are still working their way through the cleanup process. I think we’re doing really well in terms of our elimination goals for 2018. As well, for 2017, we have 76 of the sites have reached presumptive negative status. The four outstanding sites, being that we had 80 sites infected in 2017, they are actually looking to be cleared to presumptive negative hopefully by the end of the year. It will be nice to close the book on 2017.
~ Jenelle Hamblin, Manitoba Pork
Hamblin says the fact that the number of new cases dropped from 80 in 2017 to 14 in 2018 says volumes about how the sector has improved biosecurity.
