Manitoba’s animal health surveillance veterinarian reports tracebacks have shown no farms that came into contact with the province’s one farm confirmed positive for Porcine Epidemic Diarrhea have become infected.
In response to a confirmed case of Porcine Epidemic Diarrhea in southeastern Manitoba last month Manitoba Agriculture, Food and Rural Development’s Office of the Chief Veterinarian checked farms that had some form of contact with the infected farm through animals, people or equipment in the ten days previous to the first clinical signs.
Dr. Glen Duizer, Manitoba’s animal health surveillance veterinarian, says that investigation has now wrapped up.
We have traced out 60 sites that have had some form of contact with the infected farm and I’m happy to say all of them have come back as negative either through direct testing or through monitoring of clinical signs.
It is important to note that is quite a large number however we recognise that both the time frame it takes to recognise the disease in older pigs plus the normal routine business practices that happen on many farms would dictate this type of contact level.
The good news is that biosecurity has worked at protecting these operations from the disease and that to date the contacts to the infected farm have not shown any clinical signs and we’ve effectively wrapped up the investigation on the traceouts from the infected farm.
Dr. Duizer says of 432 environmental samples collected at nine high traffic sites, including assembly yards, packing plants and truck washing stations, two collected last week were found to be PED positive but no farms have become infected as a result.
However, he stresses, all high traffic sites should be treated as PED positive because of the level of contact they have with infected areas outside of Manitoba.
