The Canadian Swine Health Board is encouraging producers and their service, equipment and feed suppliers to ramp up biosecurity to keep Porcine Epidemic Diarrhea out of the Canadian swine herd.
Porcine Epidemic Diarrhea Virus was first identified in the U.S. in mid-May and has now been confirmed in over 100 herds in at least 11 states.
Florian Possberg, the chair of the Canadian Swine Health Board, reports monitoring through the Canadian Swine Health Intelligence Network shows Canada remains free of the infection and every effort is being made to keep it out of Canada.
First of all we want to understand everything we can about the virus so we know what to look for, what we’re dealing with so there’s been a concerted effort by our veterinary community to understand what exactly it is.
We’ve also alerted as many producers as possible to understand what the signs are and more importantly to really upgrade their biosecurity for possible contamination.
The disease spreads rather easily by pig to pig contact but it also can spread in manure.
It came to North America some other way so we’re not sure if it may be on contaminated equipment, material, feed ingredients or what ever so we have to take a high level of precaution in all these ways that we think it can enter our herds.
We also know that there’s a lot of truck traffic going into the U.S. carrying live pigs. coming back and picking up more animals and we’ve talked to the trucking industry and alerted them to use a high level of cleanliness and sanitation on their trucks as well to not be a vector to bring this disease here.
For more on Porcine Epidemic Diarrhea Virus visit the Canadian Swine health Board website at swinehealth.ca.
