Manitoba’s pork industry is calling for the federal government support, in the form of new programs and financial assistance, in its effort to contain a surge in the number of cases of Porcine Epidemic Diarrhea.
Since the end of April over 30 swine farms in southeastern Manitoba have been affected by Porcine Epidemic Diarrhea, compared to 10 cases over the past three years.
Earlier this month representatives of Manitoba’s pork industry addressed a House of Commons Standing Committee on Agriculture emergency hearing to discus PED.
Manitoba Pork General Manager Andrew Dickson says this poses a serious threat to the entire herd in western Canada.
We’re trying to essentially contain the disease at the moment. That’s our key focus, trying to get the number of barns being affected down and then try and get ourselves a break of three or four weeks so we can then start on the process of, which is going to take longer, it might take a year or two, to start cleaning the disease out of these barns and meanwhile ensuring that we’re preventing any entry of any new diseases.
One of our first things is we’ve been asking for this trusted trucker program which is essentially to have trucks washed in Canada rather than in the United States which the current regulations require for livestock trailers going to farms in the U.S. Then we need some help in terms of both staff and money to ensure we’ve got enough resources that can be brought to bear through the CVO, the private veterinarians, through producers and their support service companies like washing crews and manure management companies. But we need to try and get on top of this disease.
~ Andrew Dickson, Manitoba Pork
Dickson says this all takes time and money and producers are affected by this financially. He says the hope is that financial support can be provided through one of the federal support programs.
