A Manitoba swine veterinarian says the advantage Canadian swine producers have had over their U.S. counterparts in dealing with Porcine Epidemic Diarrhea is they’ve had considerable advance warning that the virus is coming.
With recent developments in Ontario related to Porcine Epidemic Diarrhea organizers of the 2014 Manitoba Swine Seminar, slated for February 5 and 6 in Winnipeg, have added a panel question and answer session to the line up.
Dr. Mike Sheridan, who will be moderating the session, notes because it’s a new virus to North America there’s no background immunity in the existing swine herd, unlike a new strain of PRRS virus which has already been in the farm as a different stain so there will be some backstopping effects.
This is a pure new virus so it is going to do what it is going to do and the animals will be required to mount as quick and as robust an immune response and that is going to take two to three weeks.
If it gets into a herd there will be losses, there will be clinical signs but most importantly there will be amazing amounts of virus shedding that will potentially move to other farms and, because we’re not totally sure yet what all the factors of movement may be, I think our sense of fear is heightened because we still in light of the fact it’s been going on eight or nine months in North America we still don’t have a real good handle on its behaviour and therefore that has really led to a fair bit of fear within our industry.
Dr. Sheridan says the advantage we have in Canada is we now know what it is and we know some of the strategies which gives us time to think outside the box and make sure our sow herds are at least more able to cope because we’ve had time to understand immune responses, sanitation requirements and some of the modes of transmission.
