The manager of the Canadian Swine Health Intelligence Network says, with the exception of Ontario, eradicating Porcine Epidemic Diarrhea virus from Canada is a realistic goal.
With the onset of warmer weather, the number of new cases of Porcine Epidemic Diarrhea being reported has fallen significantly.
After almost a month with no new reports of PED in Canada, three cases were recently indentified in Ontario while in the U.S. the number of submissions to labs has dropped from a peak of about 300 per week to about 140 per week.
Dr. Chris Byra, the manager of the Canadian Swine Health Intelligence Network, says in Canada elimination of the virus is still the goal.
We think that in the provinces that have very few or no cases, other than Ontario, that this is a realistic goal.
I think that we’re always going to have the chance of an incursion into Canada by a dirty transport vehicle say from the U.S.
The U.S. today, we think about 70 percent of the American herd has been exposed to the virus over the past year.
It doesn’t mean that they’re all shedding right now but there’s virus in a lot of places and the risk of vehicles coming back with it will be an ongoing concern so what ever we put in place today probably has to remain in place.
In Ontario the jury is out and we don’t know.
Their goal is to greatly reduce the number of sites that are positive.
Where you have animals in all in all out situations, so nursery barns and finisher barns, it’s not that difficult and there are already some that are clean that have naive animals in there not breaking with the disease.
Where there are sows in the herd it’s more difficult.
At this point they’re in the middle of the process of trying to eliminate it from those farms.
Dr. Byra says the warmer summer weather is providing an opportunities to get protocols and facilities in order so there’ll be a fighting chance in the fall when the risk increases of keeping the disease out.
He says some farms in the U.S. have been very successful in spite of being surrounded by pigs with the virus.
