The manager of the Canadian Swine Health Intelligence Network’s management team says swine health professionals are prepared to respond in the event a Porcine Epidemic Diarrhea outbreak in the U.S. spreads to Canada.
Last week, as part of the Canadian Swine Health Intelligence Network’s quarterly national meeting to discuss swine health issues during the second quarter, much of the discussion focused on the Porcine Epidemic Diarrhea outbreak that’s spread to 15 U.S. sates.
Dr. Chris Byra, the manager of the Canadian Swine Health Intelligence Network’s management team, reports while Canada remains free of the infection response plans are being developed to address the situation if the disease does get into Canada.
Several provinces have their own plans at this point with varying degrees of detail in them.
The Canadian Swine Health Board has developed a national plan so that when it becomes important if one province has the disease occur in it that the adjacent provinces be notified immediately and would be able to implement their plans in terms of keeping the problem out.
That plan has been shared with all the provinces and can help some them in developing their own.
Most response to diseases tends to be provincial so that at the end of the day it’s the province that tends to act on those so the swine health board is more in a coordinating role here.
The final thing that we talked about is laboratories in Canada now have tests for us to be able to identify PED virus, differentiate it from similar diseases and those can be confirmed as well at the Winnipeg disease lab.
Meanwhile Dr. Byra notes the Canadian Swine Health Board, the Ontario Swine Health Advisory Board and others have circulated biosecurity information to truckers, producers and companies that move pigs across borders and the Canadian Food inspection Agency has asked Canadian Border Services to be vigilant in ensuring trucks returning to Canada have been properly cleaned to prevent the pathogen from coming in in manure.
