The Canadian Swine Health Intelligence Network reports so far Canada has escaped a Porcine Epidemic Diarrhea outbreak that’s impacted several states in the U.S. Midwest.
Possible outbreaks of Porcine Epidemic Diarrhea, a viral disease similar to Transmissible gastroenteritis that causes severe watery diarrhea in pigs, has been reported in several U.S. states.
Although Canada remains free of the infection the Canadian Swine Health Board has issued an advisory outlining what to watch for.
Dr. Chris Byra, the manager of the Canadian Swine Health Intelligence Network’s management team, says producers need to be vigilant about biosecurity.
It’s a pretty much strictly fecal-oral transmission so manure from an infected pig is transferred to another pig orally and they get the infection that way.
We’re assuming that it probably transfers exactly the same as TGE and if so it moves very very easily and survives well under cold conditions, less so under hot and dry conditions.
The main avenues of transmission that we’ve always worried about for TGE and probably for this disease would have been transport vehicles, boots, not having good protocols in place for entering barns so somehow you’re accidentally taking this organism from a slaughter house, from an auction yard, from a slaughter transport truck into a barn and so all of our biosecurity measures really tend to be focused on and people should be upping their level of biosecurity in terms of disinfection of vehicles, really making sure that you have a proper Danish entry into your barns so you prevent the accidental transmission of the organism into the barn.
Dr. Byra stresses, in Canada so far we have no reported cases through laboratories and on the Canadian Swine Health Intelligence Network data base where veterinarians submit information after farm visits there have been no increases in diarrhea and, in fact, May has been the lowest month in the last five.
