The chair of the Canadian Swine Health Board says warmer summer weather offers the best opportunity for Canada’s pork industry to contain and hopefully eliminate Porcine Epidemic Diarrhea virus.
The Canadian Swine Health Board is a national organization representing pork industry stakeholders with input from government agencies created to address national swine health issues
Its main program areas have included biosecurity, research related to emerging diseases and long term disease risk management strategies.
Canadian Swine Health Board chair Brian Sullivan says those efforts, particularly biosecurity initiatives, have been very important in being better prepared for when the Porcine Epidemic Diarrhea virus arrived in North America about a year ago and we’ve been very successful in keeping it out of Canada until January but, even now that it is here, it has spread at a much slower rate.
This remains a threat for all provinces in Canada because there is interprovincial transportation going on of livestock, including pigs, and more so a lot of truck traffic going back and forth between the United States and Canada on a daily basis so that remains a big threat.
Some things have changed on the positive side with the warmer weather.
The virus doesn’t survive as well in warm weather as it does in the winter time so it is less of a threat but still a very significant threat.
We’re still seeing the occasional confirmation of new infections.
What we would hope for is to try to contain this virus, prevent it from spreading to other herds in Canada and hopefully even eliminate it.
Sullivan says we have our best opportunity during the summer months if we hope to contain and eliminate the virus from Canada.
